(film review) - Gemini Man

Apparently this movie has been in 'development hell' since the 90's as it was written then.  It does show.  Yes, this film does little-to-nothing to raise any bars whatsoever as we have seen everything they throw at us in many movies before, so you definitely know what to expect - unless you expected a 'Bike-Slap!', I mean, I've not seen that before.  But as to why this movie never came out back then, is beyond me and Ikinda wish it didn't.  This movie seems to be getting mixed to negative reviews also, but for me, I quite enjoyed it.

Henry Brogan (Will Smith) is the best there is.  The best there ever will be and he works for the government as an assassin.  However, after his last assignment, the aging assassin decides to hang up his sniper rifle and go into retirement.  Whilst in retirement, Henry finds out his own government has put plans into motion to take him out by using his former agency, a secret black ops unit codenamed 'Gemini' ran by Clay Varris (Clive Owen), to place an operative out into the field to take Henry out.  Henry is now against an operative with an identical skillset, who is younger AND faster than him.

First off, I watched this movie in the Ang Lee advised HFR format and although Ang Lee has these great ideas for film and is a great director, this format didn't really work for me.  The HFR format reminded me of watching soap operas like 'Home And Away', so watching Will Smith walk around and interacting with people, just felt out of place.  With that said, not only did the visuals look out of place, but Will Smith 2 also looks a little off in places.  In the darker lit  scenes, neat perfect, but in the lightened scenes, horrible.  But I'm not sure as to why Ang Lee wouldn't use the De-Aging technology the Marvel and Star Wars movies have been using.  Young Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell and Michael Douglas look amazing, so why wasn't this used? Is that technology only owned by Disney themselves?

Anyway, providing you can look past the visuals a bit and some of the clunky dialogue, the film isn't doing anything extraordinary but it provides an ok story with great action. The fighting and chase scenes were great, especially one including a motorbike.  I also found Benedict Wong and Mary Elizabeth Winstead great as supporting cast where the former provided light comic relief whilst the other was just a bad-ass side-kick.  The final act fight scene was quite intense and was also very good.  A few holes in the story but when the movie was finished, I wanted more.  It would be nice to see what they could do with a sequel as this movie is very Jason Bourne-esk.  The only problem, as of the date of me reviewing this movie, not a lot of Americas have watched this movie...so, I guess we need to count on Europe and China to pick up the pieces, hopefully.  I mean, it had promise.