Where I Watched It: Netflix

English Audio Description provided By: International Digital center

Written By Liz gutman

Narrated By: Annaleigh

I actually don’t get excited for big budget Netflix action films anymore. Too frequently, thre’s something about them that’s missing. They are very shiny, but I think if it was released theatrically, they wouldn’t be making a lot of money. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy Netflix films. I do from time to time, it’s just a film like this has me more with trepidation going in than most titles would.

The world has long wanted a female Bond equivalent. Halle berry had a Jinx spinoff in the works back in the day, fans have tried hard to get sequels to films like Colombiana and Atomic Blonde, to no avail. I was hoping Gal Gadot was making a play for that bond feel, but this feels way too much like the sequel would be Heart Of Stone 2, instead of From Russia With Love.

Stone (Gadot) is an MI6 operative we meet in the films extended opening action sequence that I’m sure cost the GDP of a developing nation to film. Then, once you get that Bond vibe, the opening credits come in, and they feel as close to bond as anything has been since Austin powers. Seriously.It lies. After the opening, we get a far too complicated exposition about how she’s a double agent, and works for an independent secret organization that works to prevent disasters. So, she’s a double agent, but both presumably for good. Her partner (Jamie Dornan) is making suggestive moves, but she isn’t having it. She probably heard what he had to say about Dakota johnson.

The films villain roars their head, the world is turned upside down, and just like the latest Mission Impossible entry, Stone finds herself fighting someone who has unparalleled AI power and is not using it for good deeds. The action set pieces are over the top, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I feel like this film is more interested in building sequels than entries in a franchise, like how the Poirot films are, where Branaugh comes in and leaves. A new story and case. No hang ups, though some side characters lurk around like they are part of the extended universe but not a main part.

For the most part, i feel like I’d seen this before, as just another action movie with over the top stunt work. There’s one involving Gadot kinda flying through the air that is pretty cool, but it really feels like just some of the same.

That, and I totally could tell the villain reveal. Like, i called that really early, but I won’t spoil it. It does lag in the third act like we need a break while two characters bond, but I think the scene before that the scene before would have been the perfect ending. The desire to continue the film tells me they want sequels, not to expand Stone as a singular force like Ethan Hunt or James Bond.

The audio description is good, as you would expect from a Liz Gutman written script. The action scenes have a lot going on, with explosions and car chases, several little details have to do with computers, and of course Gadot has to rock some fancy dress at least once. I think the narration did a good job of managing the hectic nature of the film, while also addressing the various fantastical uses of spy technology, and finding ways of inserting what these characters look like since some of them do make it to what might be a sequel.

It was far more entertaining than Extraction 2 for me, even if I can recognize that this is entertainment fluff, and the other likely had really intricate stuntwork. I just cared more about the future of Stone in this film than I did anyone in either of the Extraction films.

Final Grade: B