Gemini Man Reviews

The less personal Ang Lee film. Can't expect more from this kind of plot, at least pretty locations as Cartagena and Budapest and Georgia forced because of productios reasons. The replicant/Will Smith clon, lacks drama

Even though this movie was rather poorly received by the critics and will probably end up being a box-office flop, since I'm a huge fan of Ang Lee, I was still eager to check it out though. Well, first of all, I have to admit it, the story was rather weak and I didn't help that Rian Johnson already did something similar a few years back with 'Looper'. Indeed, even if it might have sounded cool on paper, it didn't make much sense to send the main character's clone to kill him. Basically, it would have been much more efficient to send someone with much more experience with no connection with the victim. Then, they came up with this really bogus theory that someone with the same genetical background would end up with exactly the same set of skills and abilities which was just ridiculous. Indeed, in my opinion, you mostly end up being who you are because of your social background and through experience and not because of your DNA. Anyway, the plot or lack of it was obviously not the selling point as the whole thing was in fact basically another experiment from Ang Lee to push the current movie technology and, this area, it was fortunately much more successful. On one hand, they managed to deliver a completely realistic and believable younger version of Will Smith and the end-result was just amazing. The only exception was during the final scene during which, somehow, the young Will Smith turned into something terribly ugly from a video-game released 20 years ago. I also have to add that Smith did a fine job playing these two versions of himself. And, then, the other technological breakthrough was obviously the HFR shooting.  Well, to be honest, it is still not really working yet but it has some potential and Ang Lee made a rather sensible choice to use it for an action flick like this one, instead than for a drama like 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk'. However, except for the amazing chase between the two Smith''s which was one of the best action scenes I have seen in a very long time, there wasn't so many action scenes after all. To make things worse, the hand-to-hand fights were pretty much unwatchable in this format. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it was an interesting experimental action flick and I believe it is worth a look but only if you would be interested in such experiment.