Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man was not screened here in its original pristine 4K high-frame-rate 3D version — that’s the way Lee meant for all of us to see it, alas, most Americans won’t get to see it that way.
Will Smith plays a middle-aged professional assassin named Henry Brogan — a killer pro that’s ready to retire after 72 kills, but the poor dude is sucked back in after he finds out that an employee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) working at his Georgia fishing club is actually an Intelligence Agency operative hired to kill him. There’s no choice but for Henry to go on the run, this time with pilot BFF Baron (Benedict Wong). To make matters worse Clay Varris (Clive Owen), a biotech profiteer, wants him dead and hires Junior, a clone Verris made from Henry’s DNA, also played by a de-aged, Fresh-Prince looking Smith.
The movie’s 30% rating on Rotten Tomatoes no doubt concerned me, but “Gemini Man” is not as bad as that rating entailed. In fact, for the first 40 or so minutes had my undivided attention, moving along at a breakneck speed that kept me involved with the story. However, it does eventually devolve into a flat ‘90s Jerry Bruckheimer movie —unsurprisingly, Bruckheimer is the producer of this film.
Smith doesn’t have much to work with here, but he does his best with the rather thinly-sketched material at hand. Winstead, also deserving better than this, is still her ever-so-watchable self. However, the de-aging CGI is … fine? Nothing to write home about, that’s for sure, as it sometimes feels like we’re watching a CGI’ed Smith rather than a fully-fleshed version of himself.
The pre-production history behind this project does date back to the ‘90s, with many drafts having been written along the way, that’s why there are a dozen credited writers in this thing. … Ok, fine. I’ll name all the culprits: David Benioff, Billy Rayand Darren Lemke, Andrew Niccol, David Benioff, Brian Helgeland, Jonathan Hensleigh, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. [C]