Nicholas Hammond
Staff Writer
The latest film by famed director Ang Lee; Gemini Man seemed to have many things going for it. Between a director who has put out films that were successful both commercially and critically and a cast of phenomenal actors, it seems impossible for the film to miss.
Gemini Man is plagued by many issues, the foremost of which unfortunately happens to be a primary gimmick. The film features the clone of retiring government hitman “Henry Brogan” hunting him and all who have been associated with him.
Both Brogan and his younger clone, “Junior”, who was specifically raised to be a deadlier version of himself, are played by Will Smith. While Will Smith does provide an easily satisfactory performance in both roles, the CGI de-aging used for his portrayal of Junior is mediocre at best, and distractingly bad and plastic the rest of the time.
The majority of the dialogue was steeped in fake sounding and clunky discussions. Most of the jokes fall flat, and while the movie does on occasion dive into the wonderful possibilities of emotional and philosophical themes involved with things like cloning and people being raised to kill, it doesn’t spend as much time on it as one might hope.
There are some fantastic comedic gems delivered occasionally, mostly by Benedict Wong’s character, “Baron”.
Baron is Henry’s longtime pilot friend who used to serve with him in a special military force. He provides some really good lines and reactions among the clunky “flirtatious” lines between Henry and Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character “Danny Zakarweski”.
Zakarweski is an agent originally sent to spy on Henry whom he then befriends making her a target as well. Her character has personality and color, but much like Will Smith’s characters, most of that just comes from fantastic actors making the best out of lines that are lacking in subtlety or any type of naturality.
The film has amazing actors and a good director, and they do really well considering how bad some of the lines are. The lighting makes it a different story. Lighting is consistently bad throughout the movie, and much like the CGI, it is at times very distracting.
Between fight scenes that are so dark it feels like watching a batman movie with sunglasses on, and everyday time scene being lit and colored as though it were a Wes Anderson film, the movie switches wildly from confusing and bothersome darkness, to tone ruining and annoying light; problems that could have been easily fixed with as little effort as choosing a nice Instagram filter.
There are occasional shots and moments that show real artistic vision; The occasional background detail or pleasant shot that was clearly given great thought. Overall, Gemini Man is a movie that shows a lot of effort from several talented artists, but it is clear that they were working through serious issues thrust on them by the bad CGI, bad lighting, and a poorly written script.
