Checked out the new Will Smith / Ang Lee directed action/spy/sci-fi flick Gemini Man. This is the one that stars both Will Smith and The Fresh Prince (de-aged Will Smith) as dueling assassins.
Will Smith is a good-guy assassin who is starting to have bad dreams after 70+ confirmed kills. He wants to retire… but the various shady government agencies and private defense firms don’t want that. It seems he’s been given false dossiers on some of his targets and maybe he hasn’t always been working for the good guys. So the shady agencies send a shadier assassin to kill him… who turns out to be a clone they made with the hope they can mass produce and army of Fresh Princes who don’t have any moral qualms with all the murder.
And an immediate problems occurs in the first act – approximately the first forty-five minutes of this film. The movie wants the reveal of a clone to be a surprise but the very premise of the movie and all its marketing is directly tied to a de-aged Will Smith vs. older Will Smith. In other words, the characters know less than the audience and we’re just waiting for them to get a clue. But it’s more than that since there’s not even a hint there’s an evil clone running around in the first act… so we’re just left with a sub-par Bourne Identity type spy thriller that’s spinning its wheels because we, the audience, know there’s a great big cloned shoe to drop. But the movie pretends and spins its wheels for waaay too long.
Unfortunately, the fact there’s a sci-fi clone at all is almost inconsequential to the movie. There’s no emotional angst, self-analysis, or philosophical or existential dread… it’s just a younger guy who is just getting started in the murder business. It doesn’t wonder what it means about the idea of the ego or self and it certainly doesn’t really ponder the scientific breakthrough. It does wander around the moral gray area of lying to a clone about its birth and about using an army of clones in wars, I guess. But most of its just Big Idea window dressing.
Now Will Smith does a good job of playing both versions of himself… though the young version is de-aged CGI. The de-aged effect is… mostly good? I guess? I mean, it’s distracting looking at the younger Smith and trying to figure exactly what isn’t working with the simulation. I think they haven’t gotten the movement of the mouth quite right. But also there’s the fact we know what Will Smooth looked like at that age (and how he acted). This version is not exactly how he looked circa Fresh Prince of Belle Air. I think he’s beefier than rail-thin Smith was and he certainly doesn’t have the youthful exuberance. This is more like modern adult Will Smith as a young man who is partly human/partly a semi-convincing CGI creation.
The movie also stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a younger military women / spy who was sent to monitor Will Smith’s character in retirement. She winds up being a target of the assassins so they go on the run together. She is given an interesting roll in that she is never the love interest and she is able to beat the crap out of bad guys without his help. That’s all great… except she only otherwise exists in the movie for exposition. They never really justify her long-term presence in the movie and they could have cut her completely. Still, it’s a nice step to make her competent, so long as they insist upon her being in the flick.
As far as the action scenes go… they are good but not great. There are some well shot and creative ones like a motorcycle chase through city streets… some of it you’ve seen before and some of it is a little CGI-heavy in spots, but it’s generally good.
But the whole movie really can’t sustain its premise or its action scenes. When it has down-time, it’s really sub-interesting spy novel stuff. It’s not good enough, the dialog isn’t crackling or exciting, and the sci-fi premise is largely squandered. Plus the de-aged Will Smith is just a little too uncanny valley to really work, especially in daylight scenes. Overall this is a good attempt, but not nearly good enough. Maybe see it for the acting when the actors have something interesting to do and maybe for the action set pieces (maybe).
Score: 68