Seeing Double
Ang Lee—the director with a filmography so varied as to include Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk and Brokeback Mountain—has recently made cinematic technological advances a hallmark of his productions. 2012’s Life of Pi was a smash hit that netted him his second Oscar and was praised as a marvel of 3D filmmaking; he decided to stick with the third dimension when filming Iraq War drama Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, but that 2016 endeavor misfired critically and commercially. More than the 3D, critics recoiled at Lee’s use of HFR (high frame rate), which presented a picture so clear and foreign as to distract from the story at hand.
Lee has seemingly entered a “George Lucas“ phase of his career, where he’s so bewitched by advancing filmmaking technology that he may no longer make traditional movies. It’s ironic, because with Gemini Man, Lee has made perhaps his most generic film to date, at least on paper, but his continued pursuit of perfecting 3D viewing has also made it a must-see event for the right audience.
Gemini Man follows Henry Brogan (Will Smith), a government sniper finally hanging up his scope after feeling he’s starting to lose his touch. When an old war buddy shares some unsettling intel with Henry about his last hit, Brogan’s government handlers send assassins to make his retirement permanent. Being the highly-skilled operative that he his, Henry evades his killers until a lone elite soldier is sent after him. What would make a fine twist is part of the film’s marketing and hook: that assassin is a younger clone of Henry, called Junior, created to have Henry’s talents without his personal baggage.
The film is very much of its time given that the script languished in development hell since the 1990s, and because it’s produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, king of 90s popcorn entertainment like The Rock. Gemini Man has the same, sometimes groan-inducing, one-liners you’d expect from a film like that, and the film occasionally feels dated as a result. But it’s also that throwback quality that brings an energy out of Will Smith that he hasn’t played in quite a while. He’s back in action star mode, but the story lends itself to a self-reflective quality that Smith portrays well. Given that he could play Junior through motion capture technology, Smith gets to literally be confronted with his past self in a vehicle the younger Smith would have been in the running for back in the day.
The digital Junior is a spectacular thing to behold, especially when viewed in HFR, which means the visual scrutiny of creating a fake person that needs to be as real as the actual people next to him (let alone one that looks just like him) is through the roof. Movies are still traditionally filmed at 24 frames per second, but the human eye can perceive the difference of higher frame rates far beyond that, making 120 frames per second like looking through a window compared to the advanced flip-book quality to which we’re all accustomed. Gemini Man opens at a train station, as we see a bullet train slowly pull up to a platform, it’s reminiscent of the early showcase cinema where an audience dove out of the way when the grainy, jittery image of a steam engine chugging toward them seemed fantastically real.
The difference here is that the clarity really does seem real, and Lee and cinematographer Dion Beebe seem to have figured out how to make HFR 3D (mostly) work. At times, the hyper-real quality of the photography makes the most mundane scene seem false, such as an early moment when Henry shares a drink with his government handler in his living room. Something about the 3D and flat lighting, the lack of style that can come with playing with light and shadow, makes it look fake. This is by design, as lower frame rates help mask things like makeup, artificial light sources, and stunt choreography, but it’s still “fake“ compared to the reality of filmed scenes we’ve been trained to accept.
Nonetheless, when the action scenes kick into gear, such as the first chase and showdown between Henry and Junior, that ultra-real aesthetic adds an immediacy that’s thrilling. It looks both fake (because it doesn’t look like other movies) and so tangible that it must be real. The motion is too smooth to seem natural, yet exactly how it would feel to see dueling assassins chase each other in real life. It’s like being plopped into the middle of a Universal Studios stunt show, and I mean that as mostly a good thing. Lee is aware that stunts lose their verisimilitude in HFR, so he stages many long takes to hold the illusion that the action before us isn’t merely stunt doubles pretending to hit each other.
Gemini Man is a generic action thriller, but Will Smith’s star power keeps its story engaging enough. Ang Lee’s gamble hasn’t paid off, as the film was met with tepid reviews and currently stands to lose $75 million, but I’d still recommend seeing it in HFR 3D if you can. You may not like Gemini Man; you may not even appreciate it, but I can promise you’ve never seen anything quite like it.