![]() The result is very slightly uncanny, but on the whole pretty convincing - especially since we’re used to seeing 23-year-old Will Smith. Young Will Smith, played by regular Will Smith in a young Will Smith mask. Gemini Man, though, isn’t using de-aging, which uses special effects to smooth out the signs of aging on an actor the best way to describe the movie’s process is that the filmmakers created a digital mask of Will Smith at 23, sometimes using old footage of Smith, and then stretched it over the face and body of current Will Smith. Probably you’re wondering now how there’s a younger Will Smith in the movie - or maybe you aren’t! After all, de-aging effects are part of a big prestigious drama this year (Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman). Younger Will Smith was sent to kill older Will Smith by Clay Verris (Clive Owen), who operates a shadowy private military organization called Gemini. (The screenplay is by a real grab-bag of writers, including Hunger Games’s Billy Ray, Shazam!’s Darren Lemkey, and Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff.) It’s such a Will Smith vehicle that there’s more than one of him the plot, which offers zero surprises whatsoever, involves Smith as elite agent Henry Brogan trying very hard to retire from his job killing people but discovering he’s being chased by a 23-year-old version of himself. On one level, Gemini Man is an absolutely by-the-numbers vehicle for an action star, Will Smith, who at 51 is still ripped and very capable of running around shooting things. Gemini Man employs some hyper-realistic technology to make a very weird movie And I can’t deny I left the theater a little scared. It’s either a crashingly dull facsimile of a shit-blows-up thriller, or maybe, just maybe, a wildly subversive comment on Hollywood’s looming dark future - a slick bit of meta-commentary on itself, Black Mirror-style. Or is it just an empty-headed lights show? I’m genuinely not sure how best to think about this confounding, deeply unsatisfying movie. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark ![]() Gemini Man is a demo reel for some fancy new movie technology, an EPCOT attraction dressed up as an action flick. ![]() Since the movie’s whole reason for being is technical wizardry, if you were watching on the back of an airplane seat you’d just be left with a bafflingly emaciated movie about nothing. ![]() But Gemini Man is a weirdly inhuman movie (more on that in a moment), and it would make for a terrible airplane watch because it is not a movie about its story or even its action sequences. He even makes sure not to trouble the viewer with any pesky existential questions - surprising, since the film is ostensibly about what makes us human. Gemini Man, directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee, fulfills every one of these requirements. Pad it out with some lovable movie stars (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong, and not one but two versions of Will Smith) and big fight scenes (in this case, something akin to pistol-whipping with a motorcycle), and bam, you’ve got a decent way to spend half your flight to Thanksgiving. Take a formulaic plot about spies and cloning, then add dialogue so predictable that getting interrupted by pilots’ announcements and turbulence and your seatmate’s need to get up and use the bathroom won’t detract from the experience. Movies like Gemini Man are usually ideal airplane viewing.
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