Fast and the Furious presents: Gemini Man: Attack of the Clones
A short time ago in a galaxy not so far away David Benioff and Darren Lemke got drunk and decided to marathon Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible, and Stars Wars. Then the little gears in their heads started turning and they came up with this terrible, horrible idea and decided to call it “Gemini man.” Then Benioff, hot of the success of Game of Thrones, went out and found himself a studio willing to give him money and somehow wrangled Ang Lee in as director. On October 11th of 2019 the creation was finally revealed to the masses!
But seriously this movie is trash.
“Gemini Man” stars Will Smith as Henry Brogan, the government’s greatest assassin. Brogan finished a job where he realizes that age is slowly starting to catch up to him and he’s not as good as he once was so he decides to call it quits and ride off into the sunset. But things don’t go as planned and one of Brogan’s old army buddies contacts him to tell him about his final job and how the target wasn’t who he was led to believe. The government being all knowing, find out that Brogan has been told about this and decide to eliminate him and everyone that knows about him. This ends up including a government agent named Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) that was tasked by the government to keep an eye on Brogan. Together the two of them along with Brogan’s army buddy Baron (Benedict Wong) try to uncover the conspiracy. The kicker in all of this is that the government ends up sending a younger cloned version of Brogan to kill him. Dun dun dun.
As I kind of already mention the plot is one of the most unoriginal I’ve ever seen. I can deal with unoriginal plots because I’m a sucker for action movies but this one wasn’t even exciting. Everything seemed to meander, even the fight scenes. The story doesn’t logically play out, the locales just change because they wanted to go somewhere else. Forgive me if I don’t remember what countries because it was all nonsensical anyway but the movie starts in the state of Georgia then goes to Latin American (I think), then to Budapest and then ends up back in Georgia. It felt like it was trying to mimic the grand scale of movies like John Wick 2 or the Mission Impossible series but didn’t really have a logical way to do it.
The characters weren’t much better. Each one is just a play by numbers archetype. The old assassin that starts to develop empathy, the female character that no one takes too seriously but then she’s surprisingly capable, the war buddy that’s loyal to a fault, and finally the deluded villain that thinks he’s doing the right thing. I think under the weak plot and characters the writers were trying to say the age old adage “war is hell.”
For a big budget film the CGI was awful. Every time any sort of action sequence happened everything that was manipulated would have this smooth texture. Even if you happen to be into the movie I think the these instances can take you out of the film because they are so jarringly bad. There was a lot of talk about de-aging Will Smith for the film but the process has an uncanny valley effect. Since the de-aging was kind of the crux of the film I would have expected them to put some more effort into it but like the entire film it felt like everyone involved was just in it for the payday. Even the voice they used for young Will Smith was wrong; it’s not like they didn’t have any voice samples or anything. The technology if out there since the Samuel Jackson de-aging in Captain Marvel looked really good. There was even a part at the end of the film when they showed young Will Smith from the side and they clearly just didn’t bother changing the face of the actor because you can see the difference in his skin tone and acne.
The movie is something that can be laughably bad if you have a few drinks and watch it with some friends. But otherwise I wouldn’t recommend spending any money or time to see it. Even with AMC A-List I wish I had skipped it and just gone to see something else instead. They could have at least given me a Will Smith sung theme song. But even that was asking too much.
TL:DR This movie makes Wild Wild West look like an academy award winner. 2 Boba Fetts out of 10.
SPOILERS:
The absolute best scene of the movie comes near the end when they're fighting a super solider in a mask and after they beat him and pull off the mask to reveal another cloned Will Smith. It was a laugh out loud moment for me and the highlight of the film.
But seriously this movie is trash.
“Gemini Man” stars Will Smith as Henry Brogan, the government’s greatest assassin. Brogan finished a job where he realizes that age is slowly starting to catch up to him and he’s not as good as he once was so he decides to call it quits and ride off into the sunset. But things don’t go as planned and one of Brogan’s old army buddies contacts him to tell him about his final job and how the target wasn’t who he was led to believe. The government being all knowing, find out that Brogan has been told about this and decide to eliminate him and everyone that knows about him. This ends up including a government agent named Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) that was tasked by the government to keep an eye on Brogan. Together the two of them along with Brogan’s army buddy Baron (Benedict Wong) try to uncover the conspiracy. The kicker in all of this is that the government ends up sending a younger cloned version of Brogan to kill him. Dun dun dun.
As I kind of already mention the plot is one of the most unoriginal I’ve ever seen. I can deal with unoriginal plots because I’m a sucker for action movies but this one wasn’t even exciting. Everything seemed to meander, even the fight scenes. The story doesn’t logically play out, the locales just change because they wanted to go somewhere else. Forgive me if I don’t remember what countries because it was all nonsensical anyway but the movie starts in the state of Georgia then goes to Latin American (I think), then to Budapest and then ends up back in Georgia. It felt like it was trying to mimic the grand scale of movies like John Wick 2 or the Mission Impossible series but didn’t really have a logical way to do it.
The characters weren’t much better. Each one is just a play by numbers archetype. The old assassin that starts to develop empathy, the female character that no one takes too seriously but then she’s surprisingly capable, the war buddy that’s loyal to a fault, and finally the deluded villain that thinks he’s doing the right thing. I think under the weak plot and characters the writers were trying to say the age old adage “war is hell.”
For a big budget film the CGI was awful. Every time any sort of action sequence happened everything that was manipulated would have this smooth texture. Even if you happen to be into the movie I think the these instances can take you out of the film because they are so jarringly bad. There was a lot of talk about de-aging Will Smith for the film but the process has an uncanny valley effect. Since the de-aging was kind of the crux of the film I would have expected them to put some more effort into it but like the entire film it felt like everyone involved was just in it for the payday. Even the voice they used for young Will Smith was wrong; it’s not like they didn’t have any voice samples or anything. The technology if out there since the Samuel Jackson de-aging in Captain Marvel looked really good. There was even a part at the end of the film when they showed young Will Smith from the side and they clearly just didn’t bother changing the face of the actor because you can see the difference in his skin tone and acne.
The movie is something that can be laughably bad if you have a few drinks and watch it with some friends. But otherwise I wouldn’t recommend spending any money or time to see it. Even with AMC A-List I wish I had skipped it and just gone to see something else instead. They could have at least given me a Will Smith sung theme song. But even that was asking too much.
TL:DR This movie makes Wild Wild West look like an academy award winner. 2 Boba Fetts out of 10.
SPOILERS:
The absolute best scene of the movie comes near the end when they're fighting a super solider in a mask and after they beat him and pull off the mask to reveal another cloned Will Smith. It was a laugh out loud moment for me and the highlight of the film.
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