'Gemini Man' and when an interesting premise is squandered

Will Smith's career is littered with missed opportunities. Bright was an infamous misfire with high production values. Hancock was like half a good, interesting movie before it went off the rails. He's excellent in I Am Legend until a disappointing last act diminishes the film.

I'm not weeping or worried for Will Smith, after all Bad Boys for Life is (to date) the biggest hit of the year, and it covd-19 continues to keep theaters closed it might remain at the top.

But, he can be a maddening movie star -- if for no other reason than his quality control radar seems to be seriously out of whack. A great example is last year's box office bomb Gemini Man. The film comes with an impressive pedigree -- it's directed by Ang Lee -- and on the surface appears to be an effects-driven thriller. But the finished product is a tonally wrong mess. In fact, it's shockingly inert considering what it could have become.

The film's major selling point was supposed to be its state of the art de-aging effects, which make it possible for Smith to play scenes opposite his younger self. In some ways, Smith seems like an ideal candidate for this kind of role. He still resembles his youthful self, and his career has stretched long enough that this could have been a meta opportunity for him to interrogate his star persona.

But instead, for some reason, Smith chooses to play both 'characters' as dour, largely humorless sad sacks -- strange, since his movie star appeal has always been his buoyancy and charm. There are plenty of actors who could effectively play scenes opposite themselves for high drama, but Smith just doesn't have the chops. So instead of being the tour de force he and Lee I imagine they want it to be, the movie winds up exposing Smith's limitations as an actor.

And as a pure action movie -- a few bravura scenes aside -- the movie falls short, too. Several major scenes are filmed in oppressive darkness, depriving them of the impact that they could have had. And the younger Smith character often looks like a rubbery cartoon in fight scenes -- although I do like the part where he tries to use a motorcycle as a weapon.

And the de-aging -- while mostly very impressive (especially in some of the close-ups) -- feels more like a gimmick. The Irishman proved that the technology could be deployed very effectively, as long as it's used to serve the story.

But the plot of Gemini Man is distressingly simplistic. Is there any character type more overplayed than the top notch assassin? I know what Lee and company are trying to do here -- make an earnest movie about someone who has lived a life they regret trying to prevent a younger version of himself from making the same mistakes -- interesting enough -- but Smith and the leaden script do nothing to fully establish what was so terrible about the life the elder Smith was leading.

Clearly, killing people for a living isn't a nice thing to do -- but Smith isn't convincing as someone who is conflicted about what they do. There's no danger about him as an actor -- at least not here -- he is a pretty unassailably 'good', so there's never really much moral conflict in him.

This preference for being 'likable' in a traditional sense is probably why he infamously turned down the role Django in Django Unchained. He reportedly wanted the romance in that movie beefed up, but I also suspect he needed to be more heroic in a mainstream sort of way.

To me, the best actors, not movie stars, don't have a lot of vanity and are willing to risk being flawed and a little unlikable. When Smith finds a role that really allows him to do that, I think he could be great. But Gemini Man was a step in the wrong direction.