Review—Gemini Man
Bobby’s Rating - 6 out of 10
Currently available on the streaming services.
Gemini Man, not a great movie, but not a bad one either.
It starts with the frequently used thriller trope of the rogue operative who gets crosswise with the shadowy government agency he works for, and then the agency decides to kill him. Throw in an unexplained and much younger version of the hero, and suddenly you’ve got a clone in the movie, and voila, it’s SciFi.
BFD? Maybe.
But let’s be real for a sec’. Any of us who likes these kinds of flicks knows how the trope works. We’ve watched it a thousand times, and we always come back for more. In a world where most of us are just trying to keep out of trouble at work over the missing TPS cover sheets, indulging the fantasy for a few hours that we’re the haunted hero who must reluctantly shwack the boss to make the world right again, is pretty appealing. I mean, I’m no psych professor, but is this really the whole point of these movies—cathartic indulgence of the boss-killing fantasy? Thankfully, only the most whacked among us ever Goes Postal in the real world.
Anyway, I’m getting off the subject of the movie… kind of.
I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t watch these movies because I want to leave the theater (get off the couch for us who watch a streaming vid in the living room) and feel inspired to contemplate my place in my family/world/relationship. I want escapism and fun. Gemini Man does a decent job with that.
Pros:
The action scenes were good, not great, but good. I did, however, dig the chase/shoot-em-up scene through Cartagena. It felt like watching a T-1000 in a Will Smith mask chase an old Will Smith through a 1052-count box of HDR crayons. The colors—WOW!
Young, CGI-face Will Smith looked 100% real in almost every scene. The technology that does this is maturing quickly, and it leads me to speculate what the future of the movie biz will look like when the stars never have to age, never get fat, in fact, are never less than perfect. And how does that turn into unrealistic self-perceptions out here in the real world?
Oops, I’m off the topic again. Back to the movie…
In the big climax battle, when the URT© (Urban Riot Tank) shows up with its spiffy-fast missiles and shreds a convenience store with its mini-gun and laser-like tracer rounds, I was double-dawg-diggin’ it. I liked the proto-robocop super-soldiers who were just fodder for Will and his sidekick-chick to shoot with perfectly aimed shots.
Will Smith in the lead—well, I’ve always liked Will Smith, but he’s a likable guy. I think for most movies, he just shows up on set and says, “Hey ya’ll, I’m feeling kinda lazy, so I’m just gonna act like me in this this time around,” and the director says, “Cool, dude. Action.” For the most part, Gemini Man felt that way.
Overall, though, the movie does an excellent job at being what it is.
But of course, we have to look at the cons too.
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Cons:
After I watch a movie like this, I sometimes wonder if the producers were sitting around saying, “Hey man, we’ve got a big budget for special effects, we signed Will-Fucking-Smith to star, and we’ve got a gold-plated formula/trope and an interesting premise. That’s good, right? I mean, Jimmy’s nephew can write the script. I heard he got a C+ on his spelling test, so the kid is literate. What more do we need?”
Some of the dialogue was silly. But I’m not going to judge too harshly there. I mean, I’m a writer, too. Lots of silly shit sounds good in my head when I’m in the heat of the story, but doesn’t sound actual-silly until I re-read it six months later. You know, after I’ve published. So it goes.
Most of the stuff that happens in the movie seems to happen as an excuse to set up an action scene or a trip from Georgia, to Cartagena, or Budapest, or any other exotic locale the budget can stand, because we audience members expect that from the trope. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t really support any of it. It all just sorta happens, ‘cause.
The movie starts a little slow as it gives us a chance to get to know the character and the situation, so we can bond with the hero before the shit hits the fan. I can or can’t be okay with this sort of thing, depending on how well it's done. Maybe for me, I just saw Will Smith being Will Smith, so I figured I already knew him, and I didn’t need to get to know the character he was ‘playing.’ So, this time around, it seemed a little like wasted time.
And while we’re talking about Will Smith, I think he’s played some outstanding roles. He’s demonstrated in numerous films that he is a talented actor. If he’d brought some of that depth to this role (necessarily coupled with a better script), this could have been a GFM© (Great Fuckin’ Movie – you know, like the Bourne Identity, also made with the same trope but different premise). Instead, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. It was worth an evening on the couch, escaping the rigors of my day—you know, the time I spend trying to come up with non-silly dialogue for the characters in the story I’m writing, trying to meet my dogs’ expectations to let them in and out of the house every three minutes, and trying to remember the cover sheet on my TPS reports.
* If you feel like I’ve been unnecessarily harsh on a masterpiece, or too easy on a terrible POS, please read my Disclaimers, Caveats, and Excuses page before you flame me.
Bobby Adair is a former programmer, with a long-lived passion - and only recently fulfilled desire - for writing. He is the author of the Freedom Fire series, the Slow Burn series and the Ebola K series.
One of Bobby's favorite quotes:
“It’s not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It’s about all of us...Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.”
- Peter Gibbons, Office Space
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