Gemini Man

Not every film has one for everyone, not everyone notices the same in every film, but I’ve noticed a concept I’m calling the inflection point. Before this point, things are going fine, and after this point is reached, well, the same can no longer be said. (There’s also the reverse version of this, wherein an erstwhile crappy flick suddenly turns the corner and figures out how to be entertaining, with the level of salvation up in the air.) This point can be relatively late in the game, as in the original It miniseries; fairly early on, like with Alita: Battle Angel; or almost smack dab in the middle, as with Serenity. For me, the inflection point came quickly in Gemini Man: We’re watching Will Smith’s first kill, a sniper shot from long distance targeting some bloke on a speeding train. Intercut with Smith setting up his shot, we get bits inside the train. Okay. One of these bits delays Smith’s shot: A little girl, sitting with her mother across the aisle from the target, out of nowhere, seeing nothing of note, just gets up out of her seat, heads over to the target’s side, and just kinds stares at him, smiling, until her mother pulls her away. Now, I ask you, what the hell was the point of that interaction? It doesn’t prevent the shot from being taken or the target being killed, it just sorta delays it a couple seconds. Nothing is seemingly gained or lost, kid doesn’t say anything, there isn’t a sense that the target is innocent and shouldn’t be killed, and it doesn’t seem to trigger anything in Smith, either. So, I ask again, what the hell was the point?

When I realized this scene’s utter meaninglessness, which happened further on down the road of events, I began to wonder what was trying to be said by the movie. Not that it necessarily mattered, ‘cause I’d reached the inflection point: I no longer cared what the movie had to say, as I’d discovered it had nothing to say. And in the first ten minutes, no less!

The meat of the plot follows Smith (his name is Henry, but, no offense to any people so named out there, I think the name kinda ridiculous, and it certainly doesn’t fit Will Smith, so I’m just gonna stick with Will Smith, ‘kay?), a highly-skilled soldier-turned-assassin/covert agent sort (you’ve seen this character archetype many times before) who’s grown disillusioned with the whole business of taking lives and whatnot, so he’s decided to retire. Yeah, have fun with that, every member of the audience over the age of five thinks. His former handlers, thinking he’s got some dirt or what-have-you, go after him, as well as an active agent sent to surveil him, with, get this, his own clone! Dun-dun-duuunnnnnn! Insert action movie shenanigans here.

On the positive side of things, we get another strong turn from Mary Elizabeth Winstead, here playing the aforementioned surveillance person, who consistently makes me wonder why I don’t see her in more films. There’s also a pretty well-done chase scene in there, the result of the first real skirmish between the two Smiths.

That’s all I’ve really got.

On the other end of things, we see yet another wasting of Will Smith’s talents. I’m not gonna say he’s bad throughout, as he is Will Smith, but his portrayal of the younger Henry is often more petulant-teenager than well-trained-badass-paramilitary-operative, and many of his emotional flourishes ring either hollow or overwrought (or both). The camera work is absolutely mystifying in its ineffectiveness, from the fact that the digital style and heavy lighting tends to make the actors look as though they’re performing in front of a green screen even when I’m pretty sure they’re not (this encompasses just about every exterior shot, particularly those set during daylight) to the overly smoothed-over style of editing cuts together to make them blatantly artificial-feeling. The visual effects work runs the gamut from convincing in some places to very much the opposite in others (see as just about every action scene) to just kinda off (mostly exhibited in the age-defying work on the younger Henry, which, sure, looks like young Will Smith, but a young Will Smith that’s been strangely ironed and stretched to avoid any semblance of wrinkling or even, y’know, proper facial movement). I can’t state for certain whether or not certain scenes or others are definitely aided by computer enhancement, but the fact that so many seem so gives me pause, and it all feels too artificial and glossy to be effective in any narrative sense, much less in anything close to a visceral action one.  Gotta love that high frame rate BS, right?

Everything visual coalesces in the poor excuse for a fight scene in some catacombs: I think the idea was to present the spectacle of two Will Smiths going at each other in a neat location, but the garbage excuse for lighting, the poor editing, and the over-reliance on visual effects to punch up the combat acrobatics ensure that we can barely tell what’s going on, much less who’s doing any off the fighting. It could have been any pair of idiots going at it down there, and we’d be none the wiser. It’s surprising that the scene is so unintelligible, considering that director Ang Lee has, up to this point, been extremely unambiguous with his shots, going to great lengths to frame potentially subtle bits as blatantly as possible (“Hey, did you notice what all of those characters had in common?” “What, you mean the ace of spades tattoo that was shoved in our faces every few minutes?” Yeah, Annihilation this ain’t.). It’s as though the audience can’t be trusted to, y’know, watch the damn movie, lest anything be lost in communication, as nuanced and intellectual as it apparently is.

Then there’s the underlying problem of a terrible script. The talents of Smith, Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong, and everyone else are completely tossed aside by a script whose words couldn’t be interpreted well by any actor, living or dead, past or future. The plot points are stock and obvious, the dialogue is inept and inane (and even more obvious), and any bits of charm and smarm Will Smith could have brought to the proceedings are abandoned in favor of a level of seriousness completely at odds with the hack-y script. Worst of all, the writers have no idea what they’re doing with regard to the whole cloning thing. I figured there’d be a nature vs nurture argument in there or something, considering this is a real-world style of clone (meaning Smith’s DNA was essentially regrown in a donor womb) rather than a futuristic copy machine sort of thing, but no, if you have the same genetic data, according to these hacks, you’re gonna turn out pretty much identical to the original. Let’s not concern ourselves with epigenetic information or the insanely influential impact of personal experience over the course of decades of life (which clearly cannot be replicated in a vacuum), let’s just have it that your DNA is your destiny, and you’re bound to act and feel the same way as someone else with the same code running through their cells. Yeah, sorry, guys, this is just ludicrous and insulting, and that’s a feeling I got throughout the runtime here. Nothing’s being said here about anything, making the relative dearth of action scenes (I think I counted only three) all the more glaring.

Gemini Man is absolutely nothing special, and in fact tends toward the inept at several turns. It not only says nothing about anything, it actively gets things wrong about life and reality in general. Its distinct lack of enjoyable action outside of the one good chase sequence is damning, but not quite as much as the horrendous script and distracting visual style. With such electric action flicks like John Wick and The Villainess out there, not to mention the quality of the Mission: Impossible series (even in spite of its often-glaring flaws), there’s no excuse for lazy fare like this, especially when it’s hyped up to be something interesting or unique. It’s not very good at all, and you should really only see it if you really enjoy Will Smith or Mary Winstead, just wait ‘til it’s either cheap or free, no need to give any money to this nonsense.