‘Gemini Man’ Film Review: Will Smith Gets to Play Two Dullards in Ridiculous Cloning Thriller
Ang Lee blends an erratic script, listless performances and high frame-rate cinematography, and the results are terrible
Nicholas Barber | October 9, 2019 @ 2:30 PM
Last Updated: October 9, 2019 @ 2:32 PM
Paramount
Darren Lemke sold his screenplay for “Gemini Man” back in 1997, and it has been cropping up in articles about great unmade films ever since. Unfortunately, the “Gemini Man” that Ang Lee has finally made has such risible dialogue, such perfunctory characterization, and such rudimentary international-espionage plotting that viewers will soon stop asking why it took so long to go into production, and start asking why it went into production at all.
Not that Lemke should shoulder all of the blame: Over the last two decades, his sci-fi story of a government assassin being hunted by his own younger clone has been revised extensively, and David Benioff and Billy Ray are also credited as screenwriters. Whatever adjustments were made to the screenplay along the way, they can’t have been improvements.
The main effect of the lengthy gestation is that “Gemini Man” now seems fatally dated and derivative. In the years since Lemke drafted his screenplay, “The Bourne Identity” and its imitators have featured countless agents being betrayed and hounded by their own handlers. “Captain America” and its sequels have covered the terrain of genetically-engineered super-soldiers. We have even had older and younger incarnations of the same killer in Rian Johnson’s “Looper.” “Gemini Man” is significantly less exciting than any of these films.
Its stupidity is established in the opening minutes, when Will Smith’s sniper-supreme Henry Brogan is assigned by the “Defense Intelligence Agency” to bump off a Russian terrorist. He does so by lying on a sunny hillside in Belgium and shooting his target through the window of a passing express train. Wouldn’t it have been easier to slip some polonium into the guy’s coffee? And do assassins normally set up their high-powered rifles in open country in broad daylight?
The ludicrousness gets even more apparent a few minutes later when Henry mentions to a stranger that (foreshadowing alert!) he is “deathly allergic to bees.” Pro tip: Hitmen who are allergic to bees should, whenever possible, avoid sprawling in meadows.
This absurd sequence isn’t a one-off. “Gemini Man” is a film in which secret agents throw grenades around in tourist hot spots, and the people hiding from those secret agents sit outside on city-center balconies while wearing fluffy white dressing gowns. If Dwayne Johnson or Jason Statham were playing “Gemini Man” for laughs, it might have been a camp treat. But Lee takes his comic-book yarn so seriously that the laughs it does prompt are accidental.
After the luckily bee-less hit, Henry decides to retire, and he informs his DIA boss (“Turn”‘s Ralph Brown, one of several English actors putting on gruff American voices) in a scene most notable for how conspicuous the logos are on the two men’s beer and soda bottles. The DIA’s response is to try to retire Henry in a more permanent fashion but, several clumsy failed attempts later, it becomes obvious that the only man who has a chance against him is Henry’s clone Junior, created by Henry’s mentor Clay (Clive Owen) about 25 years earlier. But considering that this big twist is given away by the film’s poster and trailers, there is an absurdly long wait until Junior joins the party.
In the meantime, there is lots of B-movie dialogue between Henry and his sidekicks: another DIA agent (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an ex-agent (Douglas Hodge, “Catastrophe”), and a pilot (Benedict Wong) who can rustle up a Gulfstream jet at a moment’s notice. (Don’t ask how.) This dialogue ranges from the thuddingly expository to the hilariously daft. It’s a close call, but the funniest line is probably, “Nelson Mandela couldn’t kill a man on a moving train from two kilometers away.”
When Junior does eventually turn up, there is some arbitrary globe-trotting, which appears to have been motivated more by tax breaks than by narrative exigency. Then “Gemini Man” gets onto what we should refer to as a “battle of Wills.” Lee delivers some elaborate parkour chases and fight scenes which recall “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” without matching it. What Lee doesn’t deliver is a sense of how mind-blowing it would be to discover that you are a clone or that you are talking to one.
Partly, this is the fault of the script’s offhand treatment of its central high concept, and partly it’s the fault of Smith’s pair of dull performances. Both Henry and Junior are po-faced bores, and their one-note glumness robs the premise of much of its power. It’s difficult to care that one man is a carbon copy of the other when neither of them seems especially human, anyway.
Lee was patently less interested in the whys and wherefores of cloning than he was in other technological advances. Principally, there is the digital de-aging which allows Smith to look like his current grey-templed self and also like the goofy youth he was on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” The gimmick works well enough, in that Junior doesn’t seem much more fake than anything else in “Gemini Man,” so that’s something.
The other innovation is the ultra-fast frame-rate (60 frames per second at the screening I attended), which gives the images a painfully sharp clarity reminiscent of Lee’s last film, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.” Maybe, in years to come, we will get used to that clarity, just as audiences got used to the switch from black-and-white to color. But at the moment it leaves much of “Gemini Man” looking distractingly like behind-the-scenes footage. As a more thoughtful cloning thriller might have said, just because you have the technology to do something doesn’t mean that you should use it.
22 Actors Digitally De-Aged on Film, From Brad Pitt to Robert De Niro (Photos)
Digital de-aging-- the act of making an actor look decades younger (or sometimes older) on screen by digitally smoothing out wrinkles and tightening jaw lines--is all the rage right now in the world of CGI. Why hope that a young, untested actor can be convincing as a lookalike Samuel L. Jackson when we have the real thing right here? Imagine photoshopping a picture for a magazine, but now do that over and over for every scene of a movie. It's not a complicated process, and the technology hasn't advanced drastically dating back to the first instance in 2006, but the VFX artists have matured to the point that filmmakers can go entire movies with a de-aged actor rather than just a few scenes. Here are just a few actors who have gone under the digital knife.
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen - "X-Men: The Last Stand" (2006)
The first major instance of digital de-aging came in the 2006 superhero film "X-Men: The Last Stand." Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen appear in flashback as their characters Charles Xavier and Magneto as they try and recruit a pre-teen Jean Grey. Greg and Colin Strause, formerly of the VFX company Lola Visual Effects, used what the team called "digital skin grafting" to make the actors look younger by removing the actors' wrinkles. Though this early example is a little plastic-y, it was enough to kick off an ethical discussion about what visual touch-ups could be done to actors and whether anyone should.
20th Century Fox
Brad Pitt - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008)
To convincingly tell the story of a man who aged in reverse, "Benjamin Button" director David Fincher turned to a system called Contour, developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman. Contour was first used in video games to help capture the performances and gestures of human actors and apply them to virtual characters, even going as far as to graft one person's face onto that of another human actor. So when Pitt appears older, his face has been digitally inserted onto the character. But the younger, '90s-era version of Pitt is still traditionally digitally manipulated.
Paramount Pictures
Arnold Schwarzenegger - "Terminator Salvation" (2009)
Arnold Schwarzenegger is not actually in "Terminator Salvation," even though his face is. For "Salvation," which came out during the time that Schwarzenegger was busy being governor of California, the visual effects team used an old plaster cast used on the original "Terminator" film and digitally placed it onto a body double. Schwarzenegger however would reprise his role in 2015 for "Terminator Genisys" and battle a younger version of himself. That process also required a body double and the plaster cast as a digital scanner tracked Schwarzenegger's facial movements as he read his lines.
Paramount Pictures
Jeff Bridges - "Tron: Legacy" (2010)
If the early iterations of de-aging technology made characters look like video game avatars, that was the point for "Tron: Legacy," in which Jeff Bridges plays both his older self and his younger avatar in the "Tron" video game. The team at Digital Domain spent two years getting the look right for the film, utilizing elaborate facial capture technology to properly scan Bridges's face. But the core process of de-aging would be the same as it would be done for years to come, in which Bridges would read his lines, and a body double would stand in and mimic his lines and gestures precisely. A double is used to properly mimic the lighting and shadows of a specific moment and give the artists a model on which to work, meticulously grafting the lead actor's face onto the double's body.
Disney
Sylvester Stallone - "Grudge Match" (2013)
Sylvester Stallone appears very briefly as a "Rocky"-era version of himself in a flashback scene in the comedy "Grudge Match," in which a now older Stallone squares off in the ring against his old rival, played by Robert De Niro.
Warner Bros.
Orlando Bloom - "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" (2013)
Elves aren't supposed to age, but Orlando Bloom did in the decade-plus since the original "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. So Bloom had to be digitally de-aged to resemble his younger self for the brief cameo in the "Hobbit" prequel.
New Line Cinema
Michael Douglas - "Ant-Man" (2015)
Marvel's first dip into digital de-aging technology was officially in "Ant-Man," when Michael Douglas appears as a young Hank Pym. But the team at Lola VFX actually tinkered with the same technique in "Captain America: The First Avenger." In capturing the look of "Skinny Steve," they experimented with using a body double who would mimic Chris Evans's performance and then sub in Evans's face. The technique worked so well on "Ant-Man" in de-aging Douglas that Marvel would use it over and over again in subsequent films.
Disney
Paul Reubens - "Pee Wee's Big Holiday" (2016)
Shortly before Paul Reubens got de-aged to make it look as though Pee-wee Herman had never aged a day, Mashable reported in a lengthy investigation just how extensive digital touch-ups were in Hollywood, with A-listers secretly getting virtual work done in ways that no one would recognize on screen.
Netflix
Robert Downey Jr. - "Captain America: Civil War" (2016)
Marvel and Lola's de-aging technique got more advanced yet again with "Captain America: Civil War," making Robert Downey Jr. look like he was back in 1987 and "Less Than Zero." You can see Tony Stark turning his head and interacting with other actors in a way that hadn't been done before and required far more attention to detail.
Disney
Jennifer Connelly - "American Pastoral" (2016)
Lola VFX supervisor Trent Claus told TheWrap that Jennifer Connelly was de-aged by approximately 25 years to look as though she did in the 1991 film "The Rocketeer" for Ewan McGregor's directorial debut on "American Pastoral." In place of smoothing out wrinkles or pores as is usually done, designers gave Connelly a more youthful look by working more on the mass and proportions of her face to make her cheeks, chin and jawline appear fuller and rounder, even adding some virtual "baby fat" just beneath the surface.
Lionsgate
Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing - "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016)
This is where the ethics of de-aging start to get thorny. "Rogue One" actually resurrected the actor Peter Cushing for the "Star Wars" prequel, and Carrie Fisher, whose younger likeness appears at the very end of the film, died within weeks of the film's release. Industrial Light and Magic used actor Guy Henry to stand in for Cushing and mimic his speech pattern from "A New Hope," and they later pushed back on critics, with visual effects supervisor John Knoll saying, "We weren't doing anything that I think Peter Cushing would've objected to."
Disney
Kurt Russell - "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2" (2017)
Marvel had already done de-aging so many times that it's easy to overlook how much work actually went into getting Kurt Russell and all of his luscious, youthful hair to look just right in the second "Guardians" film. Though if you ask Russell, he'll tell you that they didn't have to do too much work at all.
Disney
Johnny Depp - "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" (2017)
Another body double was used as a reference point for the "Gilbert Grape" era image of Johnny Depp as a young Jack Sparrow, but the performance is all Depp.
Disney
Colin Firth - "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" (2017)
Both Colin Firth and Jeff Bridges starred together in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle," and when they realized they'd both been digitally de-aged in the past, they admitted they weren't fans of their on-screen counterparts. Bridges said he looked like a "weird version of Bill Maher," and Firth said even his wife didn't recognize his younger self. "I mean, there's plenty of evidence, photographic evidence one can compare but it didn't remind me of my young self," Firth told ScreenRant.
20th Century Fox
Michelle Pfeiffer - "Ant-Man and the Wasp" (2018)
Like her on-screen husband Michael Douglas before her, Michelle Pfeiffer was also de-aged approximately 30 to 35 years to look as though she did in the '80s, with films like "The Witches of Eastwick" and "Ladyhawke" serving as references, Lola VFX supervisor Trent Claus told TheWrap.
Disney
Samuel L. Jackson - "Captain Marvel" (2019)
De-aging took a massive step forward on "Captain Marvel," moving from de-aging an actor over just a handful of scenes to de-aging Samuel L. Jackson for the duration of the entire movie. The effect has never been better or more believable, even though the technology has remained relatively the same. The difference though is that for the first time Lola VFX's team was able to create a young Nick Fury without the aid of a body double, cutting the shooting time in half. The artists meticulously compared Jackson to how he looked in his mid '90s-era movies to see precisely how skin would hang off his face or how light would hit his cheeks.
Disney
Stan Lee - "Avengers: Endgame" (2019)
For what would be his final cameo before his death, Marvel brought Stan Lee back to his '70s glory days for a touching time travel scene in "Avengers: Endgame." His was one of nearly 200 shots that subtly utilize the de-aging technique across the film.
Disney
Will Smith - "Gemini Man" (2019)
Peter Jackson's Weta Digital worked with Ang Lee in bringing two Will Smiths to the screen. And unlike the photoshopping technique that has been frequently used, the young Will Smith is a fully digital creation, closer to Gollum or Caesar from the "Planet of the Apes" movies than just a body double.
Paramount Pictures
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - "The Irishman" (2019)
Martin Scorsese's sprawling gangster saga about the man who claims to have killed Jimmy Hoffa depended on its massive visual effects budget to show Scorsese's longtime collaborator Robert De Niro at not just one younger age but at four different stages of his life, young and old. They managed to do so "without helmets or tennis balls" on their faces too. Turns out De Niro has had that same grumpy expression even as a young man.
Netflix
1 of 20
Will Smith is the latest actor to go under the digital knife in the sci-fi “Gemini Man”
Digital de-aging-- the act of making an actor look decades younger (or sometimes older) on screen by digitally smoothing out wrinkles and tightening jaw lines--is all the rage right now in the world of CGI. Why hope that a young, untested actor can be convincing as a lookalike Samuel L. Jackson when we have the real thing right here? Imagine photoshopping a picture for a magazine, but now do that over and over for every scene of a movie. It's not a complicated process, and the technology hasn't advanced drastically dating back to the first instance in 2006, but the VFX artists have matured to the point that filmmakers can go entire movies with a de-aged actor rather than just a few scenes. Here are just a few actors who have gone under the digital knife.
20th Century Fox
