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Author
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Topic: Gemini Man (2019)
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-17-2019 11:01 PM
I'm a little surprised not to see any reviews of this movie on F-T yet considering it's being presented in Ang-Lee-O-Vision (HFR 3-D) but maybe none of our members are running it that way. We are running the standard 2-D version.
After seeing Ang Lee's previous "Life of Pi," I was pumped for this movie, considering "Pi" had a moving and fascinating story with groundbreaking special effects. This one has the latter, but other than that it is a mindless action movie with one of those convoluted plots involving too many characters and enough twists and turns for three movies.
The big gimmick, if you haven't been keeping up, is that Will Smith winds up being hunted by a cloned younger version of himself. Scenes include the two of them fighting, hugging, arguing, etc. A "de-aging" process was done to make Will Smith look younger for some or all of this. I wonder if some of the shots were done with doubles. However it was accomplished, the effect is really convincing.
Too bad the story isn't more convincing. Will Smith (the older version) plays Henry, a hit-man for a fictional government agency, who is retiring because all those kills tend to "mess you up." (I suppose they would.)
It turns out his last "kill" before retirement was an innocent person, and as a result of him finding out about this, the director of the agency "wants him dead." It seems like anytime anyone who works for or near this agency does anything besides follow the company line, they wind up right on the hit list.
Once Henry defeats a bunch of "regular" assassins who fail to kill him, the ruthless director turns to a mysterious agency called Gemini, the head honcho of which deploys his "best" assassin. This is where the younger version of Will Smith (named Junior, natch) comes in. You can imagine the various emotional and other types of fireworks that ensue when Will figures out that the kid trying to kill him is his clone.
And then when THAT guy can't get the job done, another, even worse assassin is dispatched to kill them both, and I won't reveal more about that 'cause it would be a spoiler.
The dumbest part of this movie is, as with many action movies involving a lot of guns, none of the dozens of bad guys, wielding the most lethal automatic laser-focused weapons ever devised, can hit the broad side of a barn. There are approximately 47 billion shots fired at Henry, but none of them even manage to graze him. He also possesses the action-movie superpower of being able to fall from any height, survive any car crash or explosion, and barely get a scratch. Well, the side of his face gets road-rashed pretty good, due to him being blown right out of a car he's driving, but not enough to slow him down any.
Meanwhile, of course, Henry, and his compatriot, Dani (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who in the tradition of "woke" 2019 movies is a badass female who in a previous generation would have fallen in love with Henry, but now is just his BFF) can pick off any bad guy with one shot. I'll bet the two of them don't expend more than about 50 bullets in the entire movie. Of course they knock off a few thugs with grenades as well. It probably goes without saying that the Gemini director wants her dead, too.
The movie IS fun to watch if you check your brain at the door. There is a motorcycle chase which is so over the top as to be laughable, but still a blast to see. You've got Will Smith riding down alleys, sidewalks and eventually along the top of some kind of a ledge, about two feet wide, at about 60 mph, all while firing a machine gun at the younger version of himself, (who is firing back at him), while they're both dodging all manner of cars, trucks, curbs and people without crashing, and even changing vehicles a time or two without missing a beat. It tops off with Will the Younger using his motorcycle as a weapon by "aiming" it at Old Will, who manages to dodge it (in slow motion) by dropping to the ground and sliding under the motorcycle while it sails over him.
There are at least four other action setpieces in the movie that are equally crazy. This is a movie in which wackiness doesn't just ensue -- there's enough wackiness for five movies in this flick.
The sound mix was outstanding, I'll give it that... lots of good use of the surrounds and the explosions rattled the floor nicely.
The whole thing adds up to a movie that was entertaining, but a real letdown for an Ang Lee film. 1.5 stars.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 11-19-2019 04:59 AM
I've only seen parts of it, in 60 FPS and 120 FPS. For me, this movie was more of a tech-demo, than about the story itself.
The look of 60 fps is nothing new, there is plenty of 60 fps content available and if you're living in an "NTSC region", you're probably looking at a "60i" signal on TV quite often.
The look of the 120 fps version was actually worse, but I guess it was due to the fact that it was only rendered at 2K.
While I love high frame rate, low motion blur content for certain scenes, especially those without people, I hate the soap opera effect it still creates when used incorrectly.
What I don't get is that studios don't get it right. In our screening room, we've demoed 24 fps content interpolated to 60 fps, but without sharpening the image and keeping the motion blur intact. The result still looks very bit as cinematic as the original, but 100% fluent, especially during scenes with lots of panning.
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