“Gemini Man” is the science fiction action thriller directed by Ang Lee. It stars Will Smith in a dual role as a super assassin and his young clone. Clive Owen and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are also part of the cast. It took three scriptwriters to get this together. David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke are the culprits in this exercise of mediocrity.
A government hitman named Henry Brogan is wanting to hang up his high powered firearms and live a life of leisure. His former employers decide that he knows too much or something like that. They are in bed with some thinktank known as GEMINI. An evil scientist played by Owen has a secret clone tucked away somewhere and sends the young, confused, lethal young an to kill his DNA donor.
The action scenes worked well enough, although most of these studios don’t seem to need to work as hard for that. The dialogue was clunky and uninspiring. The premise was only mildly interesting. Smith just doesn’t look or act that dangerous for me to buy him as some world-weary super killer. The digitalized de-aging of Smith was cleverly done, but I was able to spot the stand-ins a little too quickly, especially toward the end. Winstead had some great fight scenes and she was kind of cool overall.
The were some moments that looked slick enough, but it was a good thing that I had a free movie ticket when I saw it. The movie has been out for a week already and has not fared well critically or commercially. It doesn’t really deserve to either. Most if not all of the disdain expressed has validity. I know there must be some latitude given in films of this genre in order to enjoy them, but this particular one was just asking for too much.
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