Starring Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Benedict Wong, Clive Owen

Directed by Ang Lee

Paramount Pictures, out October 11

Elite Assassin Henry Brogan just wants to retire after he starts to feel like he’s missed a step. But life seems to have other plans for him, in the form of a mysterious assailant who seems able to predict his every move.

One of the (many) problems with the 2016 Suicide Squad movie was in the character of Deadshot, as played by Will Smith. Partly, Smith’s natural charisma and screen presence worked to rather overwhelm a weak script which gave little to anyone else other than Margot Robbie, and partly because Smith’s version of the character – a deadly assassin who worked for criminals but somehow also had a conscience and a natural paternal instinct – made very little sense when you thought about it.

I mention this because the same sort of issue surrounds his character, Henry Brogan, in this film. Brogan has a mild fit of the collywobbles when his latest (successful) mission includes the rogue factor of a young child being in the target area, who he might have accidentally hit if his game were even more off than it is. I don’t actually know if it’s that Smith isn’t all the way comfortable with the idea of playing contract killers, or if studios and writers simply don’t trust that an audience would buy him in such a role, but it does leave the character as a bundle of contradictions.

However, you might argue that such considerations aren’t for the likes of popcorn action movies such as this one. After all, the main attraction here is the core conceit – that of Smith’s Brogan facing off against a younger, fitter cloned version of himself in a series of action set pieces. And to be fair, those action set pieces deliver, whether it’s a breathtaking motorcycle chase/fight through the streets of a South American city or a tense fight through dark catacombs or the climactic battle scene itself. But this is an Ang Lee film, and as the title might suggest, this leads to it having a weird duality wherein you can feel Lee’s artistic sensibilities straining to let at least some of the meaty philosophical stuff not get lost under all the guns, explosions and quips. It’s not a struggle that the director ever manages to win, and it leaves the film feeling oddly at war with itself as it progresses.

But that’s not to say that it’s without merit. Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s role as Danny, an operative dragged into the mess surrounding Brogan is especially pleasing because it deftly avoids her ever becoming that most dreaded of action movie clichés – the Love Interest. Instead, she serves as a more than capable foil to Smith, easily getting the very best out of every line of dialogue she’s given, remaining smart and capable until the very end and then definitively not walking off into the sunset with anyone. The film loses some points on this for actually threading in a bit of fourth wall-bending dialogue to emphasise how very aware it is of avoiding the ’50 year old action move man cops off with co star nearly twenty years his junior’ cliché, but still, it’s a nice change and a fun character to see.

Benedict Wong also gets to have fun as Baron, an ex army buddy of Brogan’s and expert pilot, who flies Brogan and Danny around to the various locations the movie takes in on its breathless journey, though he doesn’t really get a character so much as a set of quips to deliver at appropriate moments. Less engaging is Clive Owen’s bad guy Clay Varris, who is one of the main elements other than Brogan to suffer from the movie’s split personality. Given a script that requires him to turn from scary manipulator to scenery-chewing villain on the turn of a dime, Owen struggles valiantly to do what he can, but like his struggle to master an American accent, it’s one he’s never really in much danger of winning.

Smith also isn’t really up to the sort of nuance the script occasionally accidentally leaves on the table for him. He’s got charisma and screen presence to spare, but when the script asks him to deal with lines about ghosts, conscience etc none of it feels especially genuine, an issue not helped by the actions the script has him perform often at the very same time. There’s a particularly egregious example of this in the third act, wherein he delivers a heartfelt speech to someone about deep-rooted emotional stuff before literally splitting a guy open with a point blank gunshot and not even blinking.

I should also mention – given it’s the big selling point – the cutting edge FX used to produce Young Will Smith on the screen to fight against the current day version. Mostly the film gets away with pretending the tech is a lot better than it actually is through a combination of jump cuts, snappy action scenes and a lot of near-darkness. The one time it’s brave enough to go all the way and have both versions of the character stood next to one another, not moving much in broad daylight, the limitations are plain to see. Uncanny Valley is in full effect as another actor gets young Will’s face mapped onto their body (I assume) for this exchange, and it makes sense of the arrangements elsewhere.

Additionally, I must include that the version I saw was in 3D, and that although it had a few of the usual suspects in terms of shots to make you go ‘Oooh, look at that coming out of the screen’, it mostly didn’t seem to make any appreciable difference to the film itself.

Gemini Man isn’t a bad film, but it does feel like an oddly conflicted one on almost every level. Whether it’s the struggle between director and studio as to what sort of film they’re making, or the struggle between old-school action movie sensibilities and slightly more up to date ideas, it feels as if the movie is always at war with itself, perhaps providing the perfect metatext for its own premise.

Verdict: Decent enough action scenes and the limitless charm of its central star can’t hide the fact that this film doesn’t really ever know what it wants to be. Switch off your brain and grab some popcorn, and it’ll feel like you’ve paid movie ticket prices to watch an early Netflix special on a big screen. 6/10

Greg D. Smith