‘Agent Stone’: A curated, empty entertainment with Gal Gadot is so limited the actress is forgotten in a week

the story: Rachel Stone is a secret agent and the only person who can stop the powerful global peacekeeping organization she serves from losing its most valuable and dangerous asset: the heart.

“Agent Stone”: Available on Netflix August 11th.

Review: Francisco Quintas

Venturing into dystopian or futuristic realities, science fiction in the 1980s and 1990s came to imagine the global stakes and moral debates generated by an idea, abstract or concrete, of artificial intelligence (AI). Both the human clones in “Blade Runner” (1982) and the authoritarian regime based on a hypothetical regime in “The Matrix” (1999) fit this profile.

However, in contrast to the potential in some inventions, these buildings benefited from a way far into the future. Currently, in the most diverse sectors of activity, the new year 20 marks the last emergence of artificial intelligence.

Thus, action cinema has also faced this modern human invasion as a facilitation of espionage missions or as a clear international hostility. While films like the most recent Mission: Impossible express a complex social and political vision, The Stone Movie has been sitting on a shelf of memorable, curated blank entertainment for no more than a week.

At a time when the main branches of Hollywood (actors and screenwriters) have been suspended by strikes, in part due to the frightening prospects of artificial intelligence, which could allegedly lead to unemployment, “Agent Stone” appears to be the result of a search engine officer who has been Assign him to write a spy story.

In this case, AI is just an elusive source of information — the magic word “algorithm” matches any situation — and a manipulator of processes, agencies, people, and markets, a weapon everyone wants to deal with. To prevent this, it follows a characterless protagonist and illogical sequence of events, adorned with cool visual effects and a funny green screen.

Expected to hang in the Wonder Woman robes for years to come, Gal Gadot’s ambition to become a major action star is admirable. Physically, she has already proven that she is quite capable, but she still does very limited work as an actress.

Underlining a cast of characters without surprises or backstories, the secondary faces don’t go beyond the archetype: Jamie Dornan, the actor studios keep downgrading; Matthias Schweigher, who is growing in popularity but is rarely free from the comic relief label; vapid Sophie Okonedo and BD Wong; and a veteran actress nominated for multiple Oscars, in an engagement that was weird because it was so irrelevant that the production kept it a secret.

Written in part by Greg Rucka, the behind “The Old Guard” (2020), another forgettable Netflix product, “Agent Stone” aims to fly the “female movement” flag this summer. It is unfortunate that many screenwriters forget that, to satisfy this Hollywood need, it is not enough to write a lead who is skilled with stunts and weapons. A strong woman is more than just a pretty smile and a mean face.

Director Tom Harper has had the commendable task of extracting virtues from a mediocre script. However, he contented himself with a qualified orchestra for the vehicles and the choreography of the action sequences, well filmed and mounted, the few sources of entertainment. Among them, escaping through the narrow and steep streets of Lisbon. In this area, there have been a few failures.

Judging by its banality, it’s ironic that a generic action movie centers characters in a confrontation with artificial intelligence when it looks like a spine, which neither gets hot nor cooled, is computer-engineered.