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Gemini Man - A Swing and A Miss

Check out Joel's review:

Submitted by Bethany on Thu, 10/10/2019 - 10:06
Rating
-2

The previews for this movie did not intrigue me very much, I guess, in the end, they did their job since we decided to see it anyway. I like Will Smith but he doesn't always make great movies, so I wasn't sure where this one would fall on the spectrum. 

Gemini Man follows the story of Henry Brogan, an accomplished hitman working for the US government who decides to retire. However, his last job throws him for a loop and he ends up on the run from the very government he used to work for. He teams up with old friends and one new one to battle a threat that seems almost as good as he is at everything. 

This movie had potential - potential that it did not live up to. For me, the whole thing fell very flat. The dialogue felt stilted, nobody was bringing their acting A-game, and the story was just kinda blah. I will say I liked the story arc given to Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character - she was given more depth than most women in action movies and wasn't reduced to just being a love interest for the lead. So, kudos for that, movie. 

There were two aspects of the film that kept pulling me out of the story and led me to not caring about it very much. The first was the CGI effects of one character - we just aren't quite there yet to make that work well - instead, the CGI was rather obvious and therefore distracting. The second was that at times it felt like I was watching somebody play a video game - certain fight/battle scenes felt like they were straight out of a video game and occasionally the camera angle changed to first person - to the point that while the credits rolled I literally googled "Is Gemini Man based on a video game?" (According to Google, no, it is not.) 

If you like Will Smith and you like action movies, well, there are better choices out there. If you have nothing better to do this weekend you could go see this one in theaters, but you might be better off staying home to watch Bright or Suicide Squad instead.