One thing to note about this film is that it was meant to have existed 20 years ago. That’s mind-blowing. I’ve not knowingly watched a film that has been described as having gone through ‘development hell’ and for that number of years. But the Gemini sign is one of constant stupefaction and I know because I’m a Gemini which means that the title of this film was a tease for me and I finally gave in and watched it.
Henry Brogan, played by Will Smith is very precise snipper who can shoot into a moving train to kill a target. He works for the DIA, but at 51, he becomes jaded and wishes to quit in order to live his life away from all of it. On a visit to an old friend, he finds out that the man he’d killed on the moving train was not the assassin/bioterrorist he’d been told he was, but that this man was innocent. Henry comes to the realization that he was just a tool/a skilled warrior whose services had been used and whose allegiance had been bought through spiked/falsified mission overviews by Janet Lannister who ran the agency.
This revelatory conversation was one that was tapped by the DIA and this led to pursuit by the agency, the killing of his informant friend and Henry Brogan’s discovery of a private military unit called the ‘Gemini’, headed by Clay Varris, a man who convinced himself that cloning his best DIA ‘warriors’ in a way that eliminated emotions, ability to feel pain would be best for the American people. Clones do not have families to mourn them and they are 100 times more efficient after modification. Sounds nice but is that ethical? Since Henry Brogan was his best warrior, who best to clone than him? And this is how Junior was born.
Raised by Clay Varris as his son, Junior embodies all the traits and allergies of Henry Brogan including his phobia for water and drowning. The 23 year old is fiercely loyal to his father and the whole film for me was a back and forth of tested loyalties as Will Smith tries to paint a clearer picture for Junior of who he is and what Varris is doing.
I thought the dialogue in this film was amusing. Not in the funny kind of amusing but in a ‘I’m feeling some second hand embarrassment’ kind of way. It was cheesy dialogue, I wondered if any of the characters would laugh out loud at some point. However, it was entertaining too. It felt like a film for a lazy day when you decided to accept the flow and did not think too much about what words sounded believable and predictable. The fighting scenes were average and the only memorable scene was when an older Will Smith who was originally lying belly down on the tarmac suddenly projected himself up against gravity to avoid being hit by younger Will Smith on a bike. That was one impressive imagery. Other than that, I found the best friend trope between him and his best buddy Baron, a tiring one and of Danny, who had been sent to surveil him too predictable. She could not lie for a convincing amount of time but I guess he needed a female fugitive with him to make the film more watchable.
That’s really it from me. I’d recommend it as a lazy day watch.
