What's up, everyone?! My name is Will Smith, and I can still do it all. I can even play two characters at once! That's the main message I came away with after watching this technological action thriller.
Will Smith (Aladdin, 2019) plays an expert assassin who learns a dangerous government secret that makes him a target...and you'll never guess who is assigned to kill him. (Dramatic pause). It's himself! Through the miracle of cloning, Will Smith is forced to fight a younger duplicate of himself. Using a new facial capture technology, Will Smith gives 2 performances as his 50-year-old self and as a faster, smoother, 23-year-old nemesis.
A large part of this film's publicity has been its ushering in of game-changing cinematic technology. Normally, films today are shot at 24 frames per second. Gemini Man was shot at 120 frames per second, providing a much higher frame rate that offers more detail and richness in the rapid action scenes. Technology is exciting and it's a great avenue toward innovation in movie-making. But it's difficult to appreciate technology when it's in a film that has no creativity or originality in its story, its solemn one-liners, its acting, or its character arcs. Audiences have already seen stories like this before (such as Paycheck, 2003; Eagle Eye, 2008; Abduction, 2011; and Looper, 2012), so it's not challenging (or fun) to figure out who the bad guy is or what the twists are.
Cinematic technology is difficult and requires a lot of hard work (I'm not discounting that), but so does building believable emotions and characters people can identify with. Gemini Man shows a major imbalance between the two. But it has a fun motorbike chase.
