De-aging has come to the movies.
Well, if we’re being honest, De-aging has been a well practiced art/science in the nip-tuck, every senior citizen male movie star gets a wife half his age in his reel life reality that is and always has been Hollywood. Not to mention the expert work performed by traditional make-up artists and cinematographers who used their skills to soften the wrinkles of countless movie stars for decades. Yes, turning back the clock is a Hollywood tradition – and very much part of its appeal – that goes all the way back to the very first foot of film ever to travel through the very first camera on the very first day of filming.
In a sense, you could argue that any attempt to preserve a human being – or object for that matter – on a strip of film or as a bit of digital data is an attempt to turn back the clock. After all, movies do come out long after they were shot – sometimes years after. We are always looking at a younger version of any given actor in any given film at any given time. But, this is very different.
Through an, at times, painstaking new process called De-Aging, the other stars of Hollywood – the special effects wizards – take samples of an actor’s younger face from a much earlier performance(s) and applies them – kind of like make-up – to the older face, of that very same actor, for an altogether “new” performance in an altogether new movie.
That takes us to Will Smith’s latest, “Gemini Man” (2019). Here, special effects wizs at New Zealand based Weta Digital worked with Director Ang Lee to create a Young Will Smith using images captured from his earlier performances in “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993) and “Bad Boys” (1995). They also used images of Will Smith’s father for reference. Very cool and maybe just a little scary.
The results of all this digital cutting and pasting are plain to see as Old Will does battle with Young Will in a battle of Wills (sorry) to see which Will will become victorious. Ahhh. I didn’t even use goodWill or badWill or mention the fact that, technically, you could call this movie “Good Will Hunting, Too.” Ok, enough! I’ve gone too far. Again, sorry.
Things get underway on a grassy hill top. Henry Brogan (old Will Smith) lies on his stomach peering through the scope attached to the sniper rifle he holds against his shoulder. His target is aboard a high-speed train racing its way towards a set of tracks that sit raised on a steel structure a few hundred feet away from Brogan’s position.
Meanwhile, Henry’s eyes inside the train, Marino (E.J. Bonilla), is seated, with earpiece in ear, not more than twenty feet from that target – Valery Dormov (Igor Szasz). Marino is giving Henry the play by play, including an order not to shoot when a cute little girl gets up from her seat and wanders across the aisle to pause and stare at the oblivious bullseye that is the old Russian man. Later, we will find out that Valery is a Bio-Terrorist and Henry was literally America’s best shot at taking him out.
The scene I just described above is curiously devoid of tension. Even the use of the innocent civilian – a cute little curly haired girl – is somewhat botched. She gets up, walks over to the man and stares at him. Why? No idea.
Actions that have no apparent motivation are not as interesting as those that do. Here, it seems that the filmmakers had no idea what to do with the little girl, so they elected to have her get up and walk over and stare at the guy about to get shot at by a high-speed rifle – while seated comfortably on a high-speed train – just for the hell of it.
What if the little girl, instead, dropped a ball she was playing with and it bounced near Valery’s feet? What if he smiled, picked it up and started playing catch with her? What if Marino’s audio connection started to crackle and cut out just as he tries to tell Henry not to shoot because a little girl is in the way? What if? What if? What if not?
Tension is created in a story when you put obstacles in the way of the protagonist’s goal. Those obstacles can be psychological, emotional or physical or all of the above. They can keep the protagonist from his/her goal for hours or for just a few seconds. Here, the would-be obstacle – the little girl – is underused and, consequently, the scene falls flat. Tension never really builds. Missed opportunity.
This is just plain odd. Hollywood is usually really good at slowly ratcheting up the tension. For a great example of a filmmaker who knows how to use a child in a potentially violent scene to create a tremendous amount of tension, look no further than the Eisenstein “Odessa Steps Sequence” thievery Brian De Palma pulled off in his punchy and elegantly directed action-drama, “The Untouchables” (1987). It’s a brilliant, heart stopping set piece. The tension is almost unbearable.
Now, Lee only had a train car to play with not a whole train station. Regardless, he still could’ve made much more of the scene. And this is not just a shallow critique based solely on using people and objects as props to generate some cheap excitement. Using the girl in a more involved and emotional way would have served Brogan’s character and the overall story as well. Making the scene more tense and putting the little girl in even more jeopardy would’ve have served to dramatically express, in a gripping series of images, why Brogan’s desire to retire is completely rational and justifiable. His retirement argument would have much more punch and would be more understood as not only an emotional choice, but a moral one as well. Words are fine – they can enrich any film. But, words supported by powerful images are always the preferable choice. After all, it is a visual medium.
From there, the wheels of this already wobbly vehicle, begin to fall off with surprising speed.
Turns out, when super-sniper Brogan is not lying on his stomach pulling the trigger on yet another flesh and bone target from a few football fields away, he likes to relax at his remote tropical hideout and build bird houses and tend to his Bonsai trees. No doubt, Mr. Miyagi would approve.
Henry’s peace, though, is quickly interrupted by the arrival of an old friend and colleague, Del Patterson (Ralph Brown). Like Henry, Del works for the U.S. government. At least part of the time, Del’s job is to supply Henry with info on his latest target. But, today, Del is visiting Brogan for an entirely different reason – to convince him not to retire. Now, we know he is not going to succeed. We also know that, despite Brogan’s protestations of not looking for any more trouble, trouble is going to come looking for him.
Scenes like this are cliched and you almost wish that the filmmakers could just skip them altogether or, at least, find a different way of playing them. No such luck here.
The scene is flat. The performances are stiff and unconvincing. At one point, during their conversation, I was distracted by a wide two-shot from inside Henry’s house with the camera pointing outside. I could have sworn that the beautiful tropical backdrop was no such thing, but instead, poorly executed green screen fakery. Maybe, maybe not, but, damn if it didn’t look odd.
Soon after, Brogan boats out to his friend Jack’s yacht. There he finds a tanned and relaxed Jack Willis (Douglas Hodge) spending some quality time with his much younger girlfriend, while his wife is on dry land somewhere in France shopping to her heart’s content. After the two old friends exchange warm greetings, Willis drops a bomb on Brogan. This revelation does more than upend his plans on a quiet retirement – it quickly turns Brogan into a dead man running.
Retirement now just a brief blip of a memory fading fast from his mind, Brogan ditches his cozy paradise as he tries to stay a few steps ahead of the elite killers sent to snuff him out.
Coming along for the bumpy ride is cute and deadly DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) agent Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Brogan’s loyal bud – the affable, wise-cracking, Baron (Benedict Wong).
When the gang of killers inevitably fail to get the job done, Clay Verris (Clive Owen in full Evil Asshole Mode), CEO of Gemini Corp. – a sinister private military contractor – takes over. He sends in the only man he believes capable of taking down the ultra clever and crafty Henry Brogan – Henry Brogan. Only this Brogan is named Junior (young Will Smith) and he is a clone – 28 years younger than the original model. Junior is Verris’ “son” and product – having raised and trained him since birth.
Credit the folks at Weta Digital for doing a superb job remaking 51 year old Will Smith into his 23 year-old self. The results (save for one exterior scene set on a bright sunny day) are mostly remarkable. No “seams” are visible as Junior walks, talks, punches and kicks his way through the back half of the picture. Brought back to life, Young Will Smith will impress you just as much, if not more, than Old Will Smith – who strangely seems only half-present for most of the picture.
The two Wills finally get to really know each other in a face-to-same-face punch and kick fest set in a dark, skull and bone ridden catacomb located somewhere in eastern Europe. The morbid subterranean setting is the perfect place for Brogan to meet and tangle with his doppelganger assassin. Death literally surrounds them as shoulder high stacks of skulls and bones line the walls. That said, the fight, though entertaining, is just a little on the unintentionally funny side. One moment has the two Will heads scrunched together as if part of one body. It was a flash of a moment, but it reminded me of the goofy glory of, “The Thing with Two Heads” (LINK 6) (1972).
Hollywood can usually serve up a film like GM with lots of thrills, spills and laughs a plenty, but here everything pretty much falls flat. The performances range from bland to comically cardboard. The character arcs are either weakly expressed or evolve so suddenly that they leave you wondering if you blacked out and missed a whole chunk of the movie. Exciting and as thrilling as they are at times, the action scenes also trigger more than a few badly timed chuckles. Genuine stabs at humour only occasionally stick. Attempts at profundity come off as blunt and forced, while the family drama portions of GM seem to be treated as annoying obligations rather than what they should be – the beating heart of the film.
Director Ang Lee has quite a resume – “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994), “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) and “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) being only a partial and stunning list of his successes. Clearly, the man knows what he is doing. Here, though, there is just too much that simply does not work. And the one thing that does – resurrecting young Will via De-aging – takes a hit in an ill-advised final scene that somewhat undermines the digital abracadabra that was, previously, so impressive.
Great idea, great effects and a so-so story with so-so delivery makes “Gemini Man” half the movie it could have been.
