Gemini Man (2019) - Review
'Gemini Man' sees Will Smith as a generic, retired assassin, who quickly realises that he might have uncovered some kind of secret, and thus works with generic love interest / action heroine / exposition-dumper Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Benedict Wong (who almost rescues the entire film with a charming, endearing and amusing performance) to escape Clive Owen as generic secret service villain and his best assassin: a younger Will Smith clone. Thus, the film dives into the ethics of cloning with some long, meandering dialogue scenes, as well as exploring generic characters and occasionally throwing in an action sequence. Seriously, the trailers make 'Gemini Man' look like an action epic but I can only count maybe three set-pieces in the entire two-hour run-time?
The action itself isn't bad-per-say, but despite some fantastic choreography, it feels a bit weightless and meaningless. Because of the 12A certificate, the action isn't especially violent, and because so much of the fight sequences revolves around Will Smith fighting himself - knowing everything single move he'll make - it makes for an initially fun idea with nowhere to go. Anytime a character is mortally wounded, they walk it off quite spectacularly, making the villain's plan of "super-soldiers" seem a bit odd. Who needs "super-soldiers" when everyone seems pretty super as it is? If you're not watching a fun, but rather insubstantial action sequence though, you have to put up with cliched dialogue scenes with nothing to offer. The film isn't especially funny, and the cast for the most part don't bring much to their paper-thin characters, and with a lack of action or even overall tension to the film, there's not really much in the way of momentum. I wasn't sure quite how the film would end, but I'm not sure if that's really because it had no trajectory to aim for in the first place. When 'Gemini Man' finally ended, I honestly didn't feel satisfied because I didn't know what point it was trying to make in the first place. Also, the ending ties up everything so neatly that it just didn't ring remotely true to me.
The film was shot in 3D, 4K at 120 frames-per-second (the average film is shot at 24 frames-per-second), but alas I only saw it in measly 3D 60 frames-per-second (and I'm not sure if it was being projected in 4K, if I'm honest), which means that whilst I didn't watch 'Gemini Man' exactly as Ang Lee had intended, I wasn't far off. It was definitely an interesting film to watch from a technical standpoint though, with the 3D providing a greater depth of field, whilst the frame-rate assisted in some of the action and movement, but overall didn't feel too distracting to me. If there is an issue with this though, it's that the 3D lends a feeling of artificiality to the film, and 'Gemini Man' ends up with this very uncanny look fitting somewhere between CGI spectacle (think 'The Adventures of Tintin' or the game sequences in 'Ready Player One') and high-budget TV show. It had a very digital, almost fake look to the whole thing, which lost a sense of verisimilitude. It's definitely an interesting approach to the film, and I do wonder if watching in standard 24 frames-per-second 2D would solve this issue, but it was something I noticed whilst watching it.
Perhaps the best word to summarise 'Gemini Man' would be "generic". The script has nothing to offer, the cast are sleep-walking their way through the film, Ang Lee falls asleep at the director's chair when it's just dialogue scenes, the visual effects are pretty standard and the score is so generic that I'm honestly curious as to whether there was an "original" score to this film. To call 'Gemini Man' terrible would be an overstatement, but there's honestly very little here to comment on, beyond the film's interesting technical aspects. Ang Lee probably turned a terrible film into a slightly more watchable one, but if you're not bothered about a 3D, high-frame-rate screening, there's no other reason to actually see 'Gemini Man'. 4/10
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