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Gemini Man Movie Review

Gemini Man is a 2019 science fiction action film directed by Ang Lee and starring Will Smith in the main role. It is most definitely the nadir of Lee’s career.

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“You made a person out of another person,

then you sent me to kill him.

You made a choice to do this to me“

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Henry is an ageing assassin who finds himself being chased by someone with the ability to predict his moves. He soon discovers that the person is his clone and sets out to discover his origin. As a big sci-fi fan, I found this script both befuddling and very poor. We do not get any exploration of any of its potentially interesting themes or issues and the science behind cloning and genetic engineering felt entirely false.

Instead, this movie mostly concerned itself with action set pieces, so I would categorize it more as an action vehicle. Some of those action scenes are very well executed and a couple of set pieces are thrilling. The movie can be fun in that area, but I am not that big on action myself, so the movie has no interest for those who aren’t interested in explosive fights and shootouts that are present here throughout.

And that Ang Lee made a movie that is so frenetic and so reliant on VFX and spectacle instead of emotions and story was unexpected and truly unfortunate. Well, there is some emotional emphasis here, but whenever they tried to include more moving parts, those felt more annoying and silly instead of really poignant.

Will Smith is pretty good as the protagonist, but his character was badly written and dull. All the other people in this movie were shortchanged with Clive Owen being forgettable and Mary Elizabeth Winstead getting the most to do, but even her character was weakly developed.

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As for the clone of Smith, he is a de-aged Will Smith special effect and this is where the movie also doesn’t work. Gemini Man was supposed to be Lee’s next ‘Life of Pi’, but it simply isn’t. Not only does the story lack any meaningful emotion or thematic resonance behind it, but it doesn’t really look good either. The VFX are bland and too garish while the cinematography is also quite poor. For a film that had such an enormous budget, this surely was a misfire.

Well acted and well shot in action scenes, Gemini Man otherwise has nothing else to offer. This is a very bad SF action flick that was supposed to be the next Life of Pi for Ang Lee, but it turned out to be the nadir of his career due to its lack of heart and thematic resonance and an overreliance on frenetic action and VFX that themselves did not look all that great in the first place.

My Rating – 2