Directed by: Ang Lee
Starring: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong
Rated PG-13, 117 minutes
There is an operatic struggle at the center of “Gemini Man,” and it is very nearly a compelling one. A thriller about a retired hitman being hunted down by a government-made clone of himself, the movie takes a rather literal approach to the classic man-versus-himself conflict, in the process raising questions about violence, morality, and the tragic ways in which history repeats itself. In Ang Lee’s (“Life of Pi”) capable hands, “Gemini Man” could have been a masterpiece; instead, it is a poor imitation of one.
This is a slick, fast-paced movie, with a script that wastes no time. Rather than keep us in suspense about what will happen, who is behind it, and what it all means, we are told upfront. As a result, some of the dialogue is ridiculous in its expository overabundance, but excusably so; there’s no point in delaying the inevitable, and besides, today’s movie audiences are too smart to be fooled for long. The script (co-written by David Benioff of “Game of Thrones” fame) is refreshingly straightforward, its characters honest and direct with their admissions and ambitions.
These characters prove worthwhile, too, and Ang Lee coaxes solid, if not extraordinary, performances from his cast. Henry Brogan (Will Smith, “Men in Black”), the hitman at the movie’s center, not only has to fight himself literally, but also fights a losing battle against his guilt at what his profession has made him. Will Smith, a sporadically talented actor, plays the part with a genuine and pragmatic sense of purpose; his every action and word has the feeling of a band-aid being ripped off a wound.
Not to be outdone is Mary Elizabeth Winstead (“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”), playing Dani, an operative sent to surveil Henry before being pulled into his ordeal. Winstead exudes trustworthiness and confidence, effortlessly countering Smith’s twenty-five years of leading-man status. Meanwhile, the script does everyone a favor and paints Dani as a capable and clever partner, rather than clinging to damsel-in-distress tropes common to action movies. The trials they face, testing their combined resourcefulness, are that much more interesting for it.
Ang Lee, for his part, uses the movie as a formal exercise in fight scenes, something he comes well qualified for, having directed the martial arts classic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” The fights and chases throughout “Gemini Man” are precisely shot, smoothly choreographed, and make satisfying use of their varied settings. From a chase scene through narrow Colombian streets to a brawl in a Hungarian catacomb lit by emergency flares, the movie capitalizes on its tight spaces and minimal props; it’s not the ingredients you have, it’s how you use them.
Despite the movie’s good start, however, it collapses in the third act, the directness and simplicity of its elements giving way to superficiality and imbecilic character growth. Henry ultimately interprets the cloning program that produced his double as merely a personal affront, ignoring the real meaning and consequences of his enemies’ actions, as well as those of his own. His non-confrontational conclusion on the matter feels like a deliberate and sudden veering away from the issue at hand, a bewildering cop-out by a project that clearly had the capacity for more. And the happily-ever-after epilogue scene that follows this missed opportunity only twists the knife further, feeling like a scene a puritanical censorship board might force upon a movie in order to make the ending “better.”
It is a better movie than many, but also more disappointing than most. What could have been a great sci-fi/action movie, on a level with classics like “Blade Runner” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” is instead a middling thriller with only a surface-level treatment of the ideas at its core. It plainly shows violence and the burden borne by those asked to commit it; it shows us the uncanny sight of Will Smith, an actor with relentless cultural longevity, fighting a digitally-manufactured younger version of himself. But the movie puffs up its chest only to give up early, its ending so empty of novelty and feeling and thematic weight as to be insulting. It feels like a better movie is hiding just behind it, and what we’ve been given is its inferior, slightly inhuman test tube clone.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 10/25/19.