24 Lies a Second: Mr and Mr Smith
Created | Updated Oct 20, 2019
Mr and Mr Smith
There was a point, during the Great Late Summer Interesting Movie Drought, that I took to hanging around the local library in the afternoons while waiting for the evening Almodovar revival to get under way. One of the books I dipped into was The Greatest Movies Never Made, an account of just exactly what went wrong with the production of Brazzaville, Superman Lives, The Defective Detective, and many others. Of course, 'never' is a big word, and I must admit I took derived some amusement from the fact that at least two of these 'never made' projects had of course either been finished or were well on course to make it to the screen – Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind, long a near-mythical enigma, is currently available on Netflix, while Gemini Man, for decades a resident in Development Hell, is out at the moment, finally dragged to the screen by Ang Lee.
A list of all the people at one time tipped to star in this movie reads like a who's who of Hollywood leading men and action stars: Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, and so on. The fact that we have eventually received a version starring Will Smith... well, I suppose it depends on what your opinion of Will Smith is, but I can't help feeling that he does not have quite the same legendary status as someone like Connery or Eastwood, at least. One must try not to dismiss a film just because another possible version sounds more interesting.
For once, this is not a TV remake and has nothing to do with Ben Murphy turning invisible for 15 minutes a day. Smith plays Henry Brogan, one of those either very trusting or morally flexible chaps who has had no problem with making a career out of being an assassin for the US government, on the understanding he only has to shoot baddies. However, now Brogan is knocking on a bit and decides to retire, rather to the dismay of his handlers. It turns out he has left this just one job too late, as he discovers his last target was not a terrorist as advertised, but a genetic scientist. Dark forces within the military-industrial complex, chiefly personified by private security contractor Clay Varris (Clive Owen), decide that he knows too much to be allowed to live. But how are they going to take out the world's greatest killer?
Well, it turns out that Varris has got just the man for the job: he's young, gifted, and black, not to mention the owner of an impressive set of ears. But hang on just a minute here! What can this possibly mean? Well, you're probably way ahead of me, or have read the publicity for the movie: Owen has sneakily had Smith cloned, and is sending the younger version out to eliminate his progenitor. Older Smith is obliged to go on the run in the company of friendly agent Danny Zakarewski (Mary Elizabeth Winsome) and an old comedy-relief buddy (Benedict Wong). Will the day be won by age and experience or youth and commitment?
As noted, the script for Gemini Man has been doing the rounds since the late 1990s, and the finished movie does have a weirdly old-fashioned vibe to it – perhaps that's just because it stars people whose years of greatest star wattage do seem to be rather behind them – before Aladdin this year, Will Smith hadn't had a significant hit in a long time, Clive Owen's years of being talked of as a potential Bond-in-waiting are long over, and even Mary Elizabeth Winstead seems to have been focusing on her TV career of late. But perhaps it's more than just the personnel choices – the script is functional enough, but the whole film feels glib and superficial, about surfaces rather than details.
This is, by any reasonable metric, an SF movie of sorts, but the opening section at least feels much more like a slightly hackneyed action film about an aging hitman beginning to grow a conscience. In this respect it has a definite Bourne Identity feel to it, with rather less grit – the presence of Owen probably adds to this. As such it trundles along quite cheerfully. But the clone element is badly fumbled in all sorts of ways – the big reveal that Smith's pursuer is, well, him, has minimal impact, the revelation sort of seeping into the film rather than being a significant, discrete plot point. The script fails to engage with any of the potential of the idea of being confronted with your own double – it doesn't address nature versus nurture, the desire for second chances, the potential for resentment, and so on.
The script may not be much cop but what I must concede is that Will Smith does give an unexpectedly good performance – as the older Brogan, anyway. He manages to find some soul and depth and is probably rather better than the script deserves. Everyone else struggles a bit – Owen plays a cartoon baddie, while Winstead is stuck in a largely decorative, transactional role: box office considerations mean there is no prospect of her and Smith, er, getting jiggy with it.
As for the junior Smith – well, the special effects involved in rejuvenating him are somewhat variable, to be honest. In places they are astonishingly good – at one point Smith engages in a complex fight sequence with himself, and the deep-fakery involved is virtually flawless. Other scenes, particularly ones with the two of them wandering about in wide shot, are less than fully convincing. This may also be a consequence of the way the film's been made – it is available in super-high-frame-rate-3D (I gave it a miss and saw the regular version, as six dimensions of Will Smith is far too many for me), and to make this work it has been shot on special cameras. The end result is crisp and bright and colourful but also strangely lacking in atmosphere. The fact the whole screen is in pinpoint focus all the way through is also strangely distracting and unnatural – it's not just Smith who spends half the time in the Uncanny Valley, the whole film is there throughout.
Still, as noted, it does work quite well as a weirdly old-fashioned thriller, and there is some well-choreographed action at several points in the movie, even if the climax is vaguely unsatisfactory in a couple of ways. Gemini Man isn't exactly a bad film, it's just that given the premise and the talent involved, you would be forgiven for expecting something rather more substantial.
Also This Week...
...The first three and a half hours (which is to say, about a quarter) of the gargantuan Argentinian art-house movie La Flor. In one segment, a group of female archaeologists and a government exorcist have a spot of bother with a cursed Inca mummy; in the next, a musician couple express their feelings about their collapsing relationship by recording a not-very-good-natured duet about it. Meanwhile, a mysterious cult of the wealthy and powerful look for the secret of eternal life in the venom of rare scorpions (this really is happening in the same episode as the musical). Perplexing, sometimes frustrating, but intriguing and occasionally mesmerising – there are about another ten hours to go, so I shall reserve judgment for now.
...Notorious/brilliant British satirist Chris Morris resurfaces with The Day Shall Come, a black comedy-thriller. The FBI in Miami are so keen to make arrests on terror charges that they are basically inciting people to commit crimes and then arresting them and taking the credit. However, their latest target is Moses (Marchant Davis), a psychotic but essentially harmless street preacher with messianic delusions. The operation goes ahead despite the misgivings of agent Kendra Gluck (Anna Kendrick) and the increasingly farcical tenor of events.
Doesn't sound too bad when you put it like that, but the film basically fails the entry exam by not really being funny, despite trying very hard with many sight gags and other bits of business which are basically just silly. Morris showed he could produce superb comedy from unpromising material with Four Lions a few years ago, and there are echoes of that film here in places, but this feels contrived and a bit past its use-by date; there are much bigger and more pressing sources of satire in the USA at the moment.
