j* Movie Reviews 2019

Gemini Man (2019)

Fresh tech-concept, but the Prince is stale.

If this had used anyone but Will Smith I probably would have avoided it. And I felt it was pretty disappointing. Everything is out in the open in the trailer, older assassin is hunted by his own younger clone. Cool premise. Everyone wants to see Fresh Prince live again. Or Bad Boys (1). Or Independence Day (1). 90s reboots - bring it!

But the story is quite dull. And messy. It's kind of like it couldn't really decide what the central premise was and thought that the de-aging effect itself would carry it. The fight scenes are messier than many modern fight scenes. Obviously they often contain a huge muddle of CGI, and when 50yr Will is fighting 23year old Will I literally couldn't tell them apart. And I also was never really sure who I should be rooting for... like I mean I've known 50yr Will for about what, about three decades. But I LOVED 23year old Will. So much internal conflict. And the story just keeps taking odd turns. And making strange stylistic choices. Icecream, anyone?

I want to say "it's a hot mess." But it's kinda cold. It's a grey mess. It's a mostly melted slushy spilt on your carpet mess. There are quite a few timeline plotholes in terms of the technology they're talking about. Should have set this in the future if you wanted to make it believable. But hanging onto the 90s timeline for "realism" just undermined what could have been a more logical story.

I hadn't read "how" they achieved the doppelgänging before watching it. And there were a few times where I pondered things like "that doesn't really *look* like Will Smith, maybe they did just get a looky-likey actor." Or "I don't know who they got to play young Will, but clearly his face doesn't move like Will's face did." And these are all even weirder issues now I know that they had Will Smith playing himself. Because it didn't satisfy the basic premise I wanted to see - old Will and young Will together.

And I don't know exactly how it went wrong. Part of me thinks old Will's face just doesn't move with enough animation to support young Will's face - faces age and solidify. Several times watching young Will I just felt like he was dead inside. Maybe the problem is lack of character diversity - old Will is battle worn and weary, but young Will feels exactly the same even though he can't be. Young Will has none of the spunk you expect from you know, young Will. They're both serious and solemn and fairly boring characters. And if there's one thing real young Will never did, it's serious. So maybe they needed to you know, Jazz up the Fresh Will.

One of these stars is a pity star purely because they gave it a shot with Will Smith.

J* gives it 3 stars.

PS. This is basically the entirely opposite end of the problem I had with The Shining. In The Shining I could completely see Nicholson as Jim Carrey because I've seen Carrey do so many of those facial nuances over the years. So even though they don't "look" alike, their facial movements were so similar I could interchange them in my mind. In this, whilst the young Will might "look" exactly like young Will, his face just didn't move like young Will, so I struggled to believe it.