Film Review: "Gemini Man" (2019).

"Who will save you from yourself " This is at the heart of Gemini Man. This action thriller film directed by Ang Lee, and written by David Benioff, Billy Ray and Darren Lemke. The film centres on Henry Brogan, an elite assassin who becomes the target of a mysterious operative who can seemingly predict his every move. To his horror, he soon learns that the man who's trying to kill him is a younger, faster, cloned version of himself.

Since 1997, the film went through development hell for nearly twenty years. The concept was conceived by Darren Lemke and was originally sold to Sony, then Disney, with Don Murphy as producer. Several directors, including Tony Scott Curtis Hanson, and Joe Carnahan, were all attached at some point to direct, and numerous actors, including Harrison Ford, Chris O'Donnell, Mel Gibson, Jon Voight, Nicolas Cage, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Sean Connery were set to star. At the time, Disney's now-defunct animation/visual effects department The Secret Lab developed a test short, known as Human Face Project, to create visual effects for the film, which would involve creating a younger CG clone. However, the film never progressed as the technology was not developed enough for the film to be produced. Since then Lemke's screenplay has since under gone rewrites by Billy Ray, Andrew Niccol, David Benioff, Brian Helgeland, Jonathan Hensleigh, and the writing team of Stephen J. Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson. In 2016, Skydance Media acquired the film from Disney and Fosun Pictures came on board to finance, with Jerry Bruckheimer, Skydance's David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Don Granger as producers, and Murphy as executive producer. In April 2017, Lee was hired to direct the film, with Will Smith in the lead role with a October 19, 2019 release date. By February 2018, Clive Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Benedict Wong rounded out the cast. A the same time, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in May. Filming took place in Glennville, Georgia, Cartagena, Colombia, and Budapest, Hungary. Like Lee's previous film Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, the film was shot digitally at an extra-high frame rate of 120 fps, modified for 3D, this time, on modified ARRI Alexa cameras mounted on STEREOTEC 3D Rigs, in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The visual effects are provided by Weta Digital and supervised by Bill Westenhofer.

The film stars Smith, Winstead, Owen, and Wong. Despite their best efforts, including Smith's usual charm, their performances suffered from generic characterization, and even a lack of. Not even trying to go beyond what's already expected of them.

Gemini Man has noble goals, but lacks a strong enough screenplay to achieve them—and its visual innovations are often merely distracting. Instead of Lee trying to actually deal with the issues in the story of an elite assassin coming face-to-face with a clone of his younger self, instead he simply and solely deals with the work-in-progress visual effects and high frame rate, all in 3-D.

Simon says Gemini Man receives:

Also, see my review for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.