Gemini Man (2019)
Directed by Ang Lee
Henry Brogan is an elite 51-year-old assassin who's ready to call it quits after completing his 72nd job. His plans get turned upside down when he becomes the target of a mysterious operative who can seemingly predict his every move. To his horror, Brogan soon learns that the man who's trying to kill him is a younger, faster, cloned version of himself.
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18 films that influenced Gemini Man
What critics say influenced Gemini Man
It’s a crackerjack set up for a B-movie romp, think “Face/Off” as a prime example.
If this film had been made in the 1990s by a filmmaker within Bruckheimer’s usual stable, this could have been a disposable but fun action sci-fi romp in the vein of Face/Off , but as is it doesn’t work as either a throwback or a modern blockbuster.
The gimmick, turning swiftly standard thanks to modern VFX — the script in some form has been circulating since 1997, contemporaneous with Face/Off’s release — is that both characters are played by Smith himself, de-aged with CGI for his younger iteration, with whom the older Smith often shares the frame.
It seems that de-aging CG technology was finally decent enough (more on that in a minute) for a green light, but the finished product is something like Face/Off without the gonzo energy.
The concept for Gemini Man has been in the works since 1997, the year of John Woo’s conceptually related Face/Off and, despite the high-tech innovations, feels exhumed from a pre-millennium time capsule.
It looks, on the surface, to be a vapid throwback that can’t walk in the massive shoes left behind by similar hits like Face/Off.
Like the meat-and-potatoes adventure plot that gave way to Avatar ’s state-of-the-art CG character effects, Will Smith’s run-and-gun shtick is capable test subject for Lee’s experiments.
I’m keenly aware that anyone pooh-poohing an innovative new technology – especially one that’s being used by Mr. Cameron for the surely inescapable (once they finally arrive) Avatar sequels – inevitably sounds like those clueless old farts they trot out in the chapter of the film history books about the transition from silent movies to talkies.
While watching Gemini Man, I instantly started hoping the Avatar movies (for just one example) would all be in 4K at 120 FPS with Dolby Vision and 3D.
The saddest thing about Gemini Man is that unlike The Tingler with its buzzing seats, or Polyester with its sniff-scratch cards, or Avatar with its awe inspiring 3D, there is nothing that will carry on in history about this film.
It’s as silly and mundane a set-up as any from 25 years ago, but it’s also perfectly fertile ground for Lee to cultivate the most forward-thinking action film since Avatar.
Then, 30 or 40 minutes into the movie, a younger version of Brogan — later revealed to be a good-old-fashioned clone — is sent to tie up loose ends, with older Smith the next one to be hit (Looper much?).
If you want to see a good movie in which a character meets his younger self, watch the 2012 film Looper .
In particular the premise echoes Rian Johnson’s 2012 film Looper (though this is presumably coincidental given that the script has been kicking around since the 1990s with rewrites by many hands).
Rian Johnson’s Looper (2012), for example, executed a similar idea with more finesse and wit.
If Rian Johnson can get us to accept Joseph Gordon-Levitt in prosthetics as a young Bruce Willis in Looper, it’s fair to say we’ll buy any two actors in the right story.
Looper examined the premise in far more depth, albeit with time travel laced in.
Running off of Darren Lemke’s original concept and script from 1997—like something Bruckheimer couldn’t bear to part with from his heyday—“Gemini Man” is incredibly dated wearing it’s ’90s tinge as if it were Leonardo DiCaprio’s hairstyle from “Titanic” in 2019.
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As Robert Zemeckis went from the high-spirited craftsmanship of “Back to the Future” and “Forrest Gump” to the soulless motion-capture experiments of “The Polar Express” and “ Welcome to Marwen ,” so Ang Lee has recently traded in the humanity of “The Ice Storm,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and “Brokeback Mountain” for the chimera of high frame rates.
But in closeup, while we’re not talking The Polar Express or Beowulf levels of uncomfortable, the shots of Junior full-on with his face taking up the majority of the screen are still undeniably creepy.
Just like when Robert Zemeckis became obsessed with the idea of perfecting motion capture following The Polar Express , and seeing diminishing returns in his filmography as a result, Ang Lee is increasingly abandoning character dramas to experiment with uncanny valley technology.
The premise of a hitman outgrowing the game and the action sequences, including sniping the train and the bike scene, recall better movies, such as Skyfall (2012), and various Bourne set pieces.
It’s a thin premise filled with stock characters, wooden dialogue, and a seemingly amateurish vibe that, in today's era, rips off “John Wick” and “Jason Bourne.”
The effect is like watching a “Jason Bourne” dinner-theater production in the grip of a migraine.
Maybe we can thank Lee's sensibilities for this; it seems just as likely that the explanation lies in the film's status as a tech demo for the notorious high frame-rate 3-D cinema that hasn't gotten such a widespread showcase in the seven years since everybody despised it in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey .
Most people’s first exposure to any HFR footage was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012).
It fairs far better than Peter Jackson’s foray into this particular battlefield with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) which he shot in 48fps, but some of the same issues remain.
When Peter Jackson tried something like this, at 48 frames a second for 2012’s THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, it gave the movie an unfortunate videotape look.
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The film is directed by Ang Lee, who is certainly no stranger to heavy effects-laden films, having won multiple Oscars for 2012’s Life of Pi.
Directed by Ang Lee ("Life of Pi," "Brokeback Mountain," "Hulk," "Crouching Tiger, HIdden Dragon," "Sense and Sensibility").
Academy Award-winning cinematographer Dion Beebe (Chicago) shot them bright and tight while long-time Lee editing collaborator and fellow two-time Oscar nominee Tim Squyres (Life of Pi) stitched the work together with deft pacing.
Lee, a chameleonic director, has in recent years developed a habit of turning movies into tech demos, experimenting with elaborate visual effects simulacra in Life Of Pi and high-frame-rate, high-resolution digital 3D in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk .
His 3D “Life of Pi” was mesmerizing but technology didn’t help his next project, “Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk,” the first feature film using 120 frames-per-second.
Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage and Brad Pitt were just some of the names attached to the project before it eventually ended up in the hands of Life of Pi director Ang Lee and star Will Smith .
He's an impressive feat of CGI all the same and shows just far that technology has come since it was used to transform Jeff Bridges into the zombie-faced CLU in TRON: Legacy nine years ago.
When there’s an old and a young Jeff Bridges in TRON: Legacy, we get it because Jeff Bridges was young when he made TRON.
While the process has improved from, say, "Tron: Legacy" days, there's still a slightly distracting aspect to the rendering that makes this prince look not so fresh, but rather sporadically vacant.