WILL SMITH takes the lead role in a film that has spent 20 years in development hell – and should have stayed there.
This is an absolutely inexcusable turkey.
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Will plays Henry Brogan, a government assassin approaching retirement, who becomes the target of his employers because he knows about their corruption.
The twist is that he is hunted by the only man who could match his skills — a 20-year-old cloned version of himself, who is part of the top-secret Gemini project.
As you would expect from director Ang Lee, there are some fantastic action sequences.
But these aside, this is an absolute howler of a film, with a script Nicolas Cage would balk at.
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Will does his best — and I can’t imagine anyone coming close to doing as well as him here.
But the fact that Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were each at one point earmarked as the lead shows just how old-fashioned this supposedly futuristic film is.
The de-ageing of Smith is the best I have seen so far (notwithstanding the forthcoming The Irishman) but it still suffers from dodgy upper-lip syndrome.
Everyone looks fine until they try to talk.
Not only that, Lee seems intent on resurrecting two of the biggest crimes in modern cinema: 3D and that high-frame-rate style which gives people motion sickness and makes everything look like a bad soap opera.
This isn’t even that good.
