Gemini Man (2019) - REVIEW
"You are obviously not the best."
Honestly, Gemini Man would probably have been a blockbuster hit if it came out at the turn of the century about two decades ago. There’s a lot of cool concepts in the film but more than anything — it feels like you’ve seen this before. Ang Lee’s new film feels like an action movie from the past that has been stuck in production hell for far too long; there’s no way this film could reach the potential that it may have had.
I didn’t watch it in HFR because, honestly, the last time I did that was with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey back in 2012 and I was not having a good time as far as I remember. The younger CGI version of Will Smith really varied in terms of how it looked; it really depended on the atmosphere and lighting. It may be looking completely fine in one scene with low lighting — but any time there is a real person in the same shot, the illusion is ruined. The last scene especially is just extremely distracting and off-putting and I am positive the HFR would not have helped. I won’t lie though, there are a couple pretty well choreographed CGI action scenes in the movie — but IT is definitely not enough to justify the mediocre plot and dialogue. I wanted the film to let loose and have a lot more fun with itself; it suffers for the same reason most 90s action movies do when they stand the test of time. Most of them just take themselves much too seriously.
The plot feels pretty generic for the most part and I found it kind of a drag to get through the beginning when Smith doesn’t know his “younger self” is a clone. For a movie that marketed itself so clearly as being a “cloning” movie, one would think they would get to that point much faster. It really never gets too interesting or takes any risks and almost every “twist” is somewhat predictable. However, sometimes playing it safe is just enough – and at many times during this movie, it honestly was. I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would —unintentional laughs and all. Before the resolution beats, during all the “emotional exposition,” was definitely the weakest part of the film and I would take a shorter and more action packed version of this movie any day. It didn’t need to try to be deep and whenever it did, it lost me as well as all the 50 year old dads in the audience.
Anyways, I haven’t seen most of Ang Lee’s filmography so I wasn’t disappointed in that department. But I do enjoy Life of Pi (2012) enough to see how this is a severe downgrade in quality from that at least. Overall, this is just going to end up being one of those movies I’ll probably look up “that one action sequence” on YouTube like once or twice a year and that will be that.
Someone please get Will Smith and Clive Owen better roles. They definitely did a solid job – and honestly so did Lee at times but there is only so much you can do with a script like this along with the trouble it has gone through to get released.
It's honestly kind of ironic; the movie feels like a carbon copy of every 90s and 2000s action movie you can think of. For being a clone of much better movies, you think it would at least have something to say after being in production hell for all that time.
