Formula:
Looper / The 6th Day
Is it an exceptional bit of action movie filmmaking?
No
Is it a good amount of fun? Sure.
Ang Lee is a hard director to figure out. It's
impossible to know what he'll do next. He's made period dramas (Sense &
Sensibility), family dramas (The Ice Storm), frenetic comic book
movies (Hulk), CGI-heavy dramas (Life of Pi), martial arts action
movies (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and indie love stories (Brokeback
Mountain). He's won two Oscars for direction along the way and managed to
avoid getting put into any box. If someone asked me what an Ang Lee movie is, I
wouldn't have a good answer. I guess you could say he likes a challenge,
especially in the last decade. 2012's Life of Pi had cutting edge 3-D
and CGI. 2016's flop Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk experimented with
ultra-high frame rates. But even 19 years ago, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
defined itself to the public with its gravity-defying fights. So, I guess it
makes as much sense as anything that Lee's next movie would be a Will Smith
action movie with a plot picked out of the 90s and cutting edge technology.
If you're like me, when you hear the plot of Gemini
Man, your first thought will be that you think you've seen this movie
before, only with Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean Claude Van Damme. In it, Will
Smith plays a decorated government assassin, basically. Years of being good at
his job has taken a toll on him, so he decides to retire. Soon after, he
discovers that they planted a tail on him (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and someone
else orders for him to be killed. So, he and Winstead go on a globetrotting
mission to figure out who wants him dead and why. Oh, and he finds out that he
was cloned 23 years ago, the clone has been expertly trained as a special ops
agent, and he's been hired as the lead assassin to kill Smith. Also, he doesn't
realize he's a clone.
The movie has an easy hook. Smith and Winstead are a
likable lead duo (and thankfully not forced into a romantic subplot!). Ang Lee
knows how to shoot an exciting action sequence. Honestly, I enjoyed this movie
a lot. However, I do say that with a few caveats. The movie is a throwback. The
story is absurd. The dialogue is often clunky, like someone tried to write Will
Smith quips without having ever seen a Will Smith movie. The CGI is distracting
in the action sequences, which often looks like a couple boneless men fighting
each other. You wouldn't expect this movie to be from a guy who has won the
Best Director Oscar twice. But I liked it the same way that I liked Jack
Reacher: Never Look Back. If you can turn your brain off, and I mean
completely, then it's a decent way to burn 2 hours.
The real story of Gemini Man is the
technology used to make it. First, there's the de-aging of Will Smith so he can
play his 23-year-old self. That looked good enough. I didn't spend every second
of "young" Will Smith on screen distracted by how alien he looked,
but if I did ever stop to focus on him, he did have that artificial smoothing
that even the best CGI has trouble getting around. It doesn't help that the
"young" Will Smith character is supposed to be stoic and without
charisma. That makes it difficult to tell if his face isn't emoting because
that's part of his character or because the de-aging technology wiped it all
away. Second, there's the high frame rate problem. Like his last movie, Lee
shot this movie in 4K 3D at an ultra-high frame rate (120 fps). For some
context, most movies are shown at 24 fps. There are literally no movie
theaters able to show the movie in 4K 3D at 120 fps. I saw the movie on a
normal screen, and it looked OK. I'll let someone else get into the science of
it, but at a certain point, high frame rate makes movies look almost cheaper
(at this point) because the clarity makes it harder for the camera to control
what the audience is looking at. I remember thinking that when I saw one of the
Hobbit movies at a higher frame rate. That said, I am told that 3-D at a
higher frame rate gives people fewer headaches. So, look for Gemini Man
in special format at your own peril.
The reviews for Gemini Man have been bad, and
it's reminding me a lot of Men in Black International's critical
response. Both movies are perfectly fine, but a narrative caught on that they
are bad, which perpetuated and reinforced itself. While neither movie is
perfect, they aren't so bad that it should be the headline of anything written
about it. So, 33 Metacritic and 39% RottenTomatoes is a tad low for this
perfectly enjoyable genre movie.
Verdict: Weakly
Recommend
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