Will Smith is one of my favorite action heroes with hit and miss films. I loved him in Men in Black, I Am Legend, Enemy of the State and Bad Boys. I don't like his films Wild Wild West, Independence Day, After Earth. How will this movie fare? Let's find out.
The movie revolves around Will Smith and Will Smith and another Will Smith. The two latter Wills are the younger versions of him.
The story starts with Henry Brogan (played by Will Smith) doing his assassin thing and we later found out that he really is quite good with killing people. At 51 he then began feeling remorseful and wishes to retire. Only to find out that there are people out there doesn't wish for him to retire, but want him simply dead. That is the story line and you will see there are a lot of attempts on his life that I feel it took almost half of the movie. Being our hero, he survives each time by pure genius or simply stroke of luck.
Along the way he brings with him Danny Zakarweski (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Baron (played by Benedict Wong). So he goes around the world with these two early in the film till the end, almost. All this while he was being chased by a young Junior, who was a clone and raised by Clay Verris (played by Clive Owen). Being a clone, he has the same abilities, thinking and assassin smarts needed to kill off Henry. Being more experienced, he was able to best the other in skills, but the younger Junior is also keeping up making the story interesting.
Now Will Smith acting is not superb here but is just enough to portray a credible retired assassin. His younger Junior suffers the same way, except that CGI and other effects are terrible. It was like watching Spiderman CGI all over again. I know putting two Will Smith's in one frame is difficult but I wish they did it tastefully. The CGI movement defies the laws of Physics and I was simply laughing instead of being wowed by the action scenes.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead truly delivers here. We liked her in Die Hard and the Vampire Killer and we saw a potential in her. Glad to see her tackling action and mature roles here in Gemini Man. She is an undercover agent monitoring on Will Smith and does some good action chops here. I was hoping to see more of her in action films then I later found out, she is among the cast of Birds of Prey, so that will be a good movie to watch when it comes out.
Benedict Wong here is like Wong in the Marvel Universe. He may wear shorts and colorful shirts, but he is still the lovable Wong for us. I can't picture him in a military gear (good thing he didn't here) as he says he was in tour with Henry Brogan in Afghanistan, Mogadishu and other hotspots. He is though a great pilot so maybe he can get away with his persona here.
Clive Owen is always great as a villain but somehow his acting is so stiff that we see only one kind of acting. When we saw him here, we thought we are watching his character in Valerian and the City of the Thousand Planets. His brooding voice which is great as a villain, somehow was not enough to bring the character Clay Verris to life. Clive Owen is also good with action and in both Gemini Man and Valeria, he didn't do any, much to our disappointment. We love him in Shoot 'em Up and the BMW short film, the Escape. Even a bit role in Pink Panther as 006 he wowed us with a little bit of action that we thought he can go after the James Bond role himself. Alas wasn't to be so we will just be satisfied with him being stiff here.
Overall, the story line is a good one. Having one assassin confront his sins and find a younger version of himself after him, that makes a hell of a good story. The story telling is short of good here as most of the film is about him being chased all over the world. I wish there was more to it than just being chased after. Will Smith is a great actor but somehow splitting himself between confused him somewhat as we didn't respond well to his younger self or maybe it was the CGI that disinterested us, I dunno.
I can very well place this film to my so so list of movies of Will Smith but a memorable movie for Mary Elizabeth Winstead in an adult role.
