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Will Smith in "Gemini Man": Double disappointment despite de

2019-10-04T10:32:29.546Z


De-aging makes it possible: In "Gemini Man" Will Smith goes against his own 25 years younger killer clone. The sometimes impressive effects is unfortunately a rare stupid plot in the way.



Not often in the current film criticism is an occasion to say from the bottom: "Look better 'in the body of my enemy', where Nicolas Cage and John Travolta make up the face of the other!" "Gemini Man" with Will Smith is such an occasion. Wherever the crazy "I have to shoot my own visage" action nonsense by John Woo someday turned into a lot of fun, Ang Lee's first pure action movie remains not only in humorlessness, but in complete futility.

Will Smith plays sniper Henry Brogan, who kills people on behalf of the US government - but, hey !, just bad guys! This is intended to dissolve the figure's moral ambivalence and convert it into unconditional heroism, but after 72 murders, even Henry comes to the funnel to think about his retirement with a well-chilled and well-visible Budweiser beer.

Finally, he agrees with his contact, but instead of a gold watch, the office sends Henry a contract killer. A shoot-out and a motorcycle chase by Cartagena, Colombia, later Henry is also on the level of knowledge of every movie poster viewer: The killer looks like him at a young age! No, he is even at a young age! Henry's supervisor Clay Veren (Clive Owen) secretly took DNA from him 25 years ago and had it cloned as part of the very open-minded program Gemini (Latin for Gemini).

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"Gemini Man": He, just incorrigible

An army of clones of the best contract killer, with no family and no emotional baggage, should be born. But for whatever reason, the plan was not pursued, and for whatever reason, the prototype named Junior (also Will Smith) grew up to be the son of Clay Verris, where he accumulated the very emotional baggage the clones were to be freed from. And for whatever reason, Junior is about to take the man around the corner, after whose model he was shaped and educated.

For 22 years, the fabric of "Gemini Man" in Hollywood was in the process of development: The technology to make someone visually convincing on his half-old clone was not yet mature. With such a long development time, joked a colleague of "Variety" already, you could have turned the action scenes with Will Smith as a junior in 1997 and the next 22 years do the work, which is now the highly complex and crazy expensive technique of De-aging must do. That would not have saved the nasty story (screenplay among others: "Game of Thrones" mastermind David Benioff), but perhaps saved $ 100 million from the rumored to over $ 200 million swollen budget.

"Gemini Man"
USA / China 2019
Director: Ang Lee
Book: David Benioff, Darren Lemke, Billy Ray
Performers: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong
Production: Skydance Media, Alibaba Pictures et al.
Rental: Paramount
Length: 117 minutes
FSK: from 12 years
Start: 3 October 2019

Now the de-aging of Will Smith is the only thing worth seeing about "Gemini Man". Less scary than with Samuel L. Jackson, who digitally wrinkled for "Captain Marvel" digitally by 24 years, acts Digital Junior as a grim variant of Will Smith about "Bad Boys" quite convincing. However, the de-aging effect of the other technical upgrades of the film is undermined.

Namely, Ang Lee shot in 3D as well as with a higher frame rate (HFR), that means 120 frames per second (the movie will be shown with "only" 60 frames per second), except for the Munich Mathäser Filmpalast gives no cinema in Germany equipped accordingly.)

Compared to the usual 24 frames per second, "Gemini Man" is therefore more artificial to the inexperienced eye because it is supplied with almost three times as much information (including: the hair on the phalanges of Will Smith and the leaves of the bonsai trees he wanted to take care of in his retirement). This is more conducive to the 3D effect, but at the same time this critic has at least hurt the bright light effects in the eyes. For individual action sequences, the pictures also drew orange and blue streaks.

In the video: The trailer for "Gemini Man"

Video

Paramount

Sadly, this still does not distract enough from the story and instead reinforces the guesswork of what might have irritated the two-time director-Oscar winner Ang Lee on the project. After "Hulk" and "The crazy Hero Tour of Billy Lynn" accumulate in him the characterless monster budget movies. A return to the time of 25 years ago, when he was shooting "Eat Drink Man Woman", "Sense and Sensibility" and "The Ice Storm" in a row, would be urgent. Mental de-aging - that would be something.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2019-10-04

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