GEMINI MAN (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

gemini man (2019) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   120 minutes

Released         |   3 October 2019

cast

Will Smith ... Henry
Mary Elizabeth Winstead ... Danny
Clive Owen ... Clay Verris
​Benedict Wong ... Baron

director

​Ang Lee

writer

Billy Ray ... (writer)
 
Jonathan Hensleigh
Darren Lemke
Andrew Niccol
Stephen J. Rivele ... (writer)
Christopher Wilkinson ... (writer)
David Benioff

cinematographer

​Dion Beebe

music

​Lorne Balfe​

film editor

​Tim Squyres

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box office result

Worldwide               $​173,469,516

Australia                 $​2,102,656

North America        $​48,546,770

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movie minutiae

This is Will Smith's second time playing a hitman. He previously portrayed hitman Floyd Lawton aka Deadshot in SUICIDE SQUAD (2016).

This is Jerry Bruckheimer's first film with Paramount Pictures since DAYS OF THUNDER (1990).

This is Ang Lee's first sci-fi movie since HULK (2003).

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realted movies

LOOPER (2012)

GEMINI MAN (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

GEMINI MAN (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​An elite assassin becomes the target of a mysterious young operative who can seemingly predict his every move.

GEMINI MAN (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 9 October 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

GEMINI MAN has all the technical “Bells” and “Whistles” a big-budget, action feature film should possess, but, Will Smith’s latest effort to rekindle his former box office glory is seriously flawed by the very things being hyped as a reason why his collaboration with Ang Lee is being marketed as a “Must See” event.

It’s impossible to review GEMINI MAN without immediately addressing the young version of Will Smith that was digitally created by the visual effects technicians at Weta…

In many of the film’s scenes the younger Smith, or “Junior” as he’s referred to in the story, works well and there’s more than just novelty value to the idea of current day Will Smith going up against a version of himself that’s almost thirty years younger.

Consistency, however, proves to be a problem...

In many of the action scenes, where the camera is tracking at high speed, this latest version of facial capture technology struggles to keep pace with the physical demands of the scene.

It’s not just the facial capture effects that are problematic…

Many of the film’s visual effects appear cartoon-like and would not seem out of place in movies that was released twenty years ago.

A key set-piece, motorbike action sequence looks like it was lifted straight from THE MATRIX RELOADED (2003). The edges of reality bend and warp far more than they should as the visual effects team try as hard as they can to create the same kind of elasticity the eye perceives when viewing high speed events in real time. Unfortunately, not even two decades of technical advances can deceive the human eye, leaving a rather large question mark hanging squarely above GEMINI MAN’s “Must See” status.

The ambition of the visual effects outweighs consideration of the viewer’s reaction.

Not even the guiding hand of Ang Lee, a master at staging visual trickery within his movies, is enough to keep GEMINI MAN on the right side of believable.

Lee’s use of HFR (High Frame Rate) image capture amplifies the film’s visual effects problem.

At 120 frames per second, GEMINI MAN is presenting information to the viewer at five times the normal rate. The human eye can process up to one thousand images per second, but the mind can comfortably translate about one and fifty of those images into usable information. 

This presents a problem for the film…

The viewer is being challenged to increase their processing of deliberately captured (filmed) images from 24 to 120 per second, but, at best, the brain is comfortable with 150.

It’s like asking a casual jogger who’s a spectator at the World Athletic Championships to come down out of the stand and run the 100 metre sprint in near world record time against the finalists who have trained most of their lives for the event.

To add to the challenge presented by the visual effects, the script, credited to Darren Lemke, Billy Ray and David Benioff, feels like a series of unrelated set-pieces that never coalesce into a meaningful whole. 

Even the story’s own internal logic struggles to make sense of the plot.

Right from the outset, it’s hard to believe the motivation for Will Smith’s Henry Brogan finding himself in the situation with which he’s confronted...

The one thing Brogan gets any satisfaction from in his life is firing a shot at a target from two kilometres away, yet he wants to retire from the thing that gives his life meaning.

As the story unfolds, revealing more of Brogan’s feelings and backstory, the less inclined viewers might be to believe that this is the reason why the character has been targeted by his former employers.

The premise for GEMINI MAN has been seen of film many times before, far more effectively.

The most recent, best known example is Rian Johnson’s LOOPER. 

Before he tore down the childhood memories of a million middle-aged fanboys with STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017), Johnson impressed many of those same fanboys, among others, with his Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon Levitt time travel twister about a futuristic hit man who wants to retire but is hunted down by a younger version of himself, sent from the past to tidy up loose ends in the future… 

There’s also the great Spierig Brothers 2014 Australian Sci-Fi brain bender PREDESTINATION starring Ethan Hawk.

Removing the Sci-Fi from the premise from the search parameters broadens the number of films even further…

The JOHN WICK series is a case in point.

Assassin of near mythological status wants out but “insert name” antagonist would prefer to see him dead…

GEMINI MAN trades off story for technical wizardry but falls flat.

The film’s shining light is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Danny, an operative sent to keep Smith’s Brogan under surveillance but is forced to join him as a fugitive when it becomes clear they’ve both been targeted for assassination.

Winstead’s last role of major note was opposite John Goodman in the impressive 2016 Sci-Fi thriller 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, but since then, she’s been done more TV than feature film work. 

As Danny, she impresses; holding her own against Smith, but the pair seem mismatched when it comes to any possibility of a relationship and, playing against expectation, her interaction with Smith’s Henry is kept professionally platonic.

Unlike Winstead, Clive Owen’s Clay Verris is far from convincing as the film’s chief antagonist.

Perhaps it’s the fact that most of his scenes are with “Junior” and, despite Smith being present during the filming of the them, Owen’s performance is forced and he appears to be interacting with something that he’s imagining and is not physically present before him.

The HFR is unforgiving of even the slightest awkward nuance and Owen’s expressions are the least convincing throughout the film.

Despite some effort on the part of the writers to provide Verris with some degree of humanity; ultimately, he ends up being not much more than a one-note villain whose desire to control all overwhelms any scerric of decency toward his “son” or Brogan.

For all its hype, GEMINI MAN is no better than the sum of its technical prowess or its recycled story ideas. 

Given the talent in front and behind the camera, it’s a disappointing film. 

It’s not a disaster; it’s just very generic.

Others have told this story far more effectively and no amount of artifice can help to cover the film’s flaws...

Indeed, it’s that very artifice that is at the heart of GEMINI MAN’s problem!

GEMINI MAN MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Gemini Man (film) - Wikipedia
​Gemini Man (2019) - IMDb
​Gemini Man (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes

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