Stop me if you seen this before: an expert assassin (Will Smith) working for the shadowy parts of the US government wants to retire after one last job only to end up on the run because some suited bad guys believe he knows too much. Along the way he ropes in a pretty looking woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and calls up a goofy old comrade (Benedict Wong) for some help. Oh, you did see that plot before. Okay, well but here's where GEMINI MAN really snatches the rug out from under you: the top hired killer sent after the golden gunman ends up being a clone of him! You have seen that too? And you can easily predict out all of the film's future plot points and other "groundbreaking" twists it has in store? Well, the real question now is why did these Hollywood filmmakers waste so much time, money and resources on such a painfully trite action flick?
GEMINI MAN never gets off the blocks and become a truly satisfying experience, especially when viewed in the way it was intended by its so-called visionary director. Ang Lee continues to smear his good name by adding fuel to his fiery passion for 3D filmmaking and high frame rate. Both add zilch to the blah pic besides making you endlessly wish you were watching something better. Sure, there are a few fine visual wows like a minigun slaughtering up a convenience store or a man slo-mo walking through fire but those literally come at the very end of the film. The rest of 120 frames per second enhanced scenes are either taxing displays of mundanity and trivial dialogue or action sequences that are too frenetic to behold and severely lack gravitas. The hand-to-hand fights are really when it all falls apart; the supposed film technology of the future turns CQC into a glorified slap fight. Will Smith and the rest of the cast try to make do with what they got but they can't elevate the paint-by-numbers script. Additionally, the whole brouhaha with the de-aging of Smith ends up for naught. He's just not convincing playing a 23-year-old version of his main character, often acting more like a 15-year-old teen that is ready to pee his pants at a moment's notice, plus you can audibly hear his artificially sweetened and carefully edited voice from the rest of the sound design like a bad dub. GEMINI MAN is so mockable and such a brain dead idea to produce in this manner that it would have been better off as a fake movie within a movie.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
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