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Review of Heart of Stone (Steven Price)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you appreciate Steven Price's 2017 score for American Assassin and desire a louder and more obnoxious variation on its basic ingredients.

Avoid it... if you expect any satisfyingly intelligent development or sense of high style from this abrasive take on the espionage genre.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Heart of Stone: (Steven Price) With grandiose visions of starting a franchise to compete with that of Mission: Impossible, Netflix signed actress Gal Gadot to play Rachel Stone, a super-agent working, astonishingly, for an intelligence organization outside the normal groups. This employer, The Charter, is tasked with general peacekeeping and management of the obligatory population of the planet's super-villains. They conduct their work with what's called a predictive AI quantum computer (what?) that can hack into any device in the world, hopefully including the spaceships of Elon Musk. The story would be more interesting if they were tasked with finding revolutionary new orgasm triggers, but here we are. In 2023's Heart of Stone, these folks chase around the planet, visiting familiar James Bond haunts and causing irreparable damage to flying objects while firing guns at each other. Double-crosses abound, of course, and most of the team has to be killed during betrayal in true Mission: Impossible emulation. The critical consensus labeled Heart of Stone a mediocre rehash with the sole appeal of Gadot as the lead, but that didn't stop Netflix subscribers from making the movie one of the studio's top summer 2023 success stories. The formulaic nature of the film carries over to its music as well, with composer Steven Price reuniting with director Tom Harper to provide an expected techno-orchestral score for the topic. Since his meteoric rise in 2013 with Gravity, Price has toiled with a number of projects of lesser quality, and Heart of Stone proves itself to be highly related to the composer's music for 2017's American Assassin. The distinction of the 2023 score comes in Price's attempt to infuse an even bigger and badder element of coolness and brute force into the formula here, and the end result is merely a more abrasive, obnoxious version of the prior work. The basic ingredients are mostly the same, a full orchestra augmented by muscular percussion, electric guitars, synthetic manipulation, and occasional attempts at warmth from an acoustic guitar and solemn string accents. Not surprisingly, a solo female vocal effect is applied in a few places during Heart of Stone, but it's badly processed so that it loses all organic appeal as a representation of the lead character. Price mostly resists the worst of the processing techniques by the industry during this era, but he compensates with the sheer volume of his brazenly loud demeanor.

Where Price lacks in nuance during Heart of Stone, he compensates with an abundance of noise, the respites from slashing and pounding often generating little interest. The mere presence of such robust tones will suffice for some listeners, but others will be disappointed by Price's inability to infuse any distinctive sense of style into the ambience. Considering Gadot's involvement in both projects, it is hard not to ponder how engaging 2020's Red Notice by Steve Jablonsky continues to be in comparison to Price's approach. He tries to emulate that stylish sense of pizazz in a cue like "A Winning Hand," but he is undone by its cheesy vocals and alarm-like elephant wails from brass. (The latter technique pierces a few cues in the score.) Character-centric moments like "It's Good to Hear From You" are devoid of any convincing warmth, even with attempts by singular strings to afford such caring. Ultimately, it's the pounding action music that defines Heart of Stone, overwhelming the work's two primary themes. The main identity is for the concept as a whole, and it's a frustratingly simplistic series of two descending four-note phrases with no secondary section until some marginally dramatic extension from strings during "The Heart and The Charter." This main theme repeats endlessly in the score, resolving to key at the end of its eight notes in immature fashion despite no real resolution happening in every instance. The idea definitely wears out its welcome after the first half hour of the work. A second theme emerges prominently as the score progresses, however, a series of vaguely rising two-note figures for Stone and, to a lesser extent, the technology of the tale. This motif does receive more intriguing treatment late in the score, establishing that the hero's music ascends in structure while the concept's brash attitude confidently descends back down. It's during the final 20 minutes of the score that Price finally allows the orchestra to assert itself, starting in "When the Moment Comes," where the group develops out of acoustic guitar on the second theme. Still, don't expect these final cues to really solve the simplicity or provide meaning to the thematic structures. Price's strategy for the narrative is basically adequate but poorly executed, too much of each facet of the score sounding identical and the action cues diminishing in effectiveness as they repeat themselves. The 88-minute length of the score's presentation on album doesn't do it any favors, and the numbing experience is followed by an obnoxious song that stylistically would fit better in American Assassin. Reduce your expectations and reduce the volume for this brainlessly adequate journey.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 91:09

• 1. Heart of Stone (2:45) • 2. She Can Do This (3:34) • 3. Betting on Blood (3:10) • 4. Nine of Hearts (4:37) • 5. Welcome Party (5:06) • 6. Stone Goes Home (2:17) • 7. Six Hostiles (3:18) • 8. Eat Tapas (2:47) • 9. All Under Control (2:51) • 10. I Think You're Ready for the Field (3:16) • 11. I Was So Pleased It Was You (4:28) • 12. I Hate Secrets (1:45) • 13. Either Us or Them (3:30) • 14. Guessing Its Not the Nightlife (2:50)

• 15. Would You Look at That (3:29) • 16. Look Who It Is (3:37) • 17. I Don't Have a Parachute (2:11) • 18. Secret Agent Our Way Back (2:24) • 19. Up and Running (2:45) • 20. If the Heart Wants to Find Us It Will (2:37) • 21. See You on the Other Side (3:52) • 22. When the Moment Comes (4:53) • 23. A Little Time to Think Things Over (1:21) • 24. Settle Down Now (2:06) • 25. A Winning Hand (4:07) • 26. Its Good to Hear From You (3:49) • 27. The Heart and the Charter (4:34) • 28. Quiet* (3:09)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for this album. The person who wrote the track listings needs a basic English course.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Heart of Stone are Copyright © 2023, Netflix Music and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/17/23 (and not updated significantly since).