Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong, Douglas Hodge, Ralph Paterson, Linda Emond, Ilia Volok, E.J. Bonilla.

There is nobody better equipped to destroy you than yourself. The ones who hate you, fuelled often by an unfathomable amount of logic, jealousy and rage will often leave you bleeding and broken on the doorstep of history. However, it is our own minds, our psyche and fear that will see us finish the job. Broken and foiled is one thing, but our own self-doubt, our willingness to acknowledge our insecurity and self-loathing, is enough to defeat us completely.

When confronted by the physical aspect of that emotional turmoil, when perhaps we look in the mirror, we are reminded of what it is that frightens us, that our youth has faded, our stamina depleted, and what we see in the mirror, the image we wish to see, has been replaced by an older version who no longer carries the weight of expectation like a prize, but the finality of our own endgame approaching.

So, it is to the subtly employed in Ang Lee’s Gemini Man that sees Will Smith face off against Will Smith in a battle of who is the finest assassin to have graced the ideals of their trade. However, what we gain in experience is soon removed by anybody who pays the piper, by youth and the malleability of manipulation; when the time comes to step back and retire, the last thing you ever expect is to be replaced by yourself.

For a film that deals with the idea of replacement, there is little in the way of shock value when it comes to the reveal of just who is stalking Will Smith’s Henry Brogan, it is expected, both within the idea of the title, and in the way the credit and display of the film’s intention from the start. What does come across though, and perhaps with less enthusiasm that was first imagined, is the way an older actor can be digitally de-aged to the point where they can play against themselves.

Such a course of action in modern day cinema will be applauded for the way it utilises such effects, however, as the film itself shows at times, it can also be detrimental to the art of acting. Of course, there is nothing wrong with Will Smiths prowess or acting, but the dept of feeling he is portraying in the younger character of Junior is not in keeping with how the actor himself would be seen. This then leads to a dichotomy, a schism in how we perceive an actor of immense talent such as Will Smith, and the need to subtly ask the question of how we then are capable of erasing their identities later on down the line.

The film itself hangs on this idea, and because of that insistence of plot being driven, it leaves extraordinarily little else to admire or to praise, and whilst the action scenes are well placed, the overall plot is one that has only one direction, one sense of outcome, and it lacks the sincerity to which it strives because of it.

A film that treads heavily on its ability to use the effects it needs to carry the plot forward, Gemini Man is unbalanced its overall desired ambition.

Ian D. Hall