Who among us ever thought they'd see the day, where old and new can collide seamlessly before our eyes? The marriage of cutting-edge technology (to the point where it's not yet finished, in fact) and some of the most retrograde action filler you've seen since the early 90s straight-to-video boom? Yet here we are, standing agog as US Government black-ops hitman Henry Brogan (Will Smith) battles it out with someone who looks a bit like Will Smith used to look a quarter of a century ago, if you squint. And you've had a couple of drinks. And if you never really paid that much attention to Will Smith a quarter of a century ago.
FUN But hey, it's all good fun! No wait, it's not is it? That's right, it's not good fun. I'm always getting those mixed up. The first act of Ang Lee's Gemini Man lopes along like a perfectly serviceable moody thriller that's about to set up its mind-shattering reveal. Except that reveal has already been completely undercut by a) the film's title, b) the film's poster, and c) the film's trailer which explains the entire fucking concept before its audience has even had a chance to buy a ticket.
Dropped into the October schedule like a badly rendered stepchild, Gemini Man comes over as a shelved 199x Van Damme thriller which has been waiting for the technology to catch up, and when it did Jason Statham said he was busy so they phoned Will Smith instead. And then it turned out the technology had lied about catching up. And lied badly.
So it's Looper but for people who don't like thinking about stuff. Will Smith trying to kill his other self, except one of The Will Smiths is younger and both of The Will Smiths are good people really and it was all Evil Clive Owen's fault anyway, with the latter's accent from the Washington DC suburb of Walthamstow and having gone up four trouser sizes on account of all the fucking scenery he's chewing. Benedict Wong stars as the gadget-guy / pilot / comic-relief. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is The Girl One*1. More on her later.
SPENDER On the plus-side, the action sequences are relatively well shot and directed in terms of actual physicality. The movie features a gorgeous continuous tracking shot of Smith-Senior on a motorcycle, and that's doing so well until he starts being chased in turn by Smith-Junior. The resulting fracas contains some of the worst animated acrobatics in living cinematic memory (think of the swing-sequences in 2002's Spider-Man, except it's 2019 and now there's really no excuse). Your leading man puts in a satisfactory turn in a role which isn't more than half-written anyway, as do Winstead and Wong. But Gemini Man was never about characterisation to begin with.
Yes, as to the main attraction? Well, future-phobes will be relieved to hear we're not there yet. Much like Tarkin and Leia from Rogue One, the digitally de-aged Will Smith looks more or less fine. Until his face begins to move that is, at which point we're sent hurtling down the Uncanny Valley fast enough to give us whiplash. Although as much as Smith-Junior looks like Pixar's work-in-progress of animating a new turnip character, his digital visage still emotes more feeling than that of Clive Owen; the cinematic equivalent of a bookmark in that he just sits there inert, not adding anything to the plot and whose only function is to periodically remind you where you'd got to. Gemini Man is clinical proof that any mediocre film can always be made worse by Owen's presence.
So in the third act where, coincidentally, a third Smith turns up (in a twist so ham-fistedly telegraphed that you can almost hear Ang Lee hoping that no one in the audience has seen Oblivion) - I was thinking 'Oh, hang on... ace-marksman assassin, super-fighter, wearing a mask... is Will Smith's other self Deadshot? Is this a deftly-marketed Suicide Squad lead-in?' Nope. No such luck, mate. Wishful coincidence. It's just another Will Smith.
CROCODILE SHOES The passage of time is treated as an inconvenience throughout, international air journeys undertaken off-screen and in apparently zero-time according to the conversations continuing around them. The whole thing is edited as if a two-hour movie has been commissioned for a 45-minute TV slot (oh that it were so short). Although at one point during an in-car, background-painting conversation as Smith-Junior asks his progenitor "you grew up in Philadelphia, right?", I at least thought we were going to get some rapping thrown in to add some much-needed goodwill nostalgia. Nope, another opportunity missed.
Still, at least a flick like this can bring some woke 21st century sensibility to the action genre, right? As if. At one point where Smith-Senior is fighting his younger self in the Budapest catacombs*2, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's sole purpose as a trained, qualified and experienced government agent is to stand pointing a shotgun at them. Not as a threat or a warning, but because it's got a torch mounted on the top and the audience wouldn't be able to see what's happening otherwise. Five minutes later when the brawl has moved to a subterranean pool, she drops a flare in and jumps in after them. I mean does the Bechdel Test even matter when your supporting actress is doubling as your lighting technician? Isn't that equality enough, guys?
We close with some faux-philosophical bantering about the ethics of cloning and patriotism (no, seriously), a payoff which probably looked neat on the page followed by the kind of implausibly happy ending that feels like it was written and assembled over a year after principal photography. Not least because Smith-Junior's CGI face is by this point so warped and distended that it looks as if a swarm of wasps may be about to emerge at any moment.
"I'm gonna be okay!" says our reformed demi-protagonist as the credits beckon. No. You're really not, mate. None of us are going to be okay until the Uncanny Valley is left out of Hollywood journey-planning for good...
Screaming into a mirror and noticing your reflection is out of sync.
And is drawn in crayon.
And while we're on the subject, David Benioff has co-written the screenplay to Gemini Man. That's David Benioff as in "Benioff & Weiss" from The Game Of The Thrones. Now, I don't watch GoT (long story, no real agenda but catch me about it another time), but if Gemini Man is anything to go by then the upcoming Star Wars project from Benioff & Weiss is probably in the shit already...
*1 And if you find yourself in the fandom subset of being a) British, and b) slightly in love with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, you'll be pleasantly surprised when Will Smith arrives on his aggressively pursued date to find Mary already halfway through a pint. Fantastic stuff, albeit another callback to mid-90s UK culture. Mind you, a waiter brings over two more pints a minute later and all of a sudden the one she had in front of her is gone. Like the waiter's taken that away. We didn't see her finish it. Either the continuity sucks in this movie or the table service does... [ BACK ]
*2 And why does this part of the film take place in Budapest? No idea. No real reason at all mate. Not mentioned. Scenery and/or tax breaks, one imagines. But they come and go back to Langley VA like it's nipping round to the Co-Op for some milk. Which would be arguably a more interesting film... [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Okay, join in if you know this one. Something-something Joel Kinnaman stars as Peter, a former gangster who’s now a Family Man™ and off-the-books double agent for the FBI. Something-something Polish mobsters doing a drug deal that goes wrong. Something-something Peter cast adrift by his corrupt handlers and facing a five-stretch to avoid blowing his cover. Something-something Peter has to work this whole damned thing through himself not knowing who he can trust, to find some version of justice, keep his family safe and spend more of the run-time giving glowering glances than reading his lines. Etcetera. Etcetera.
BOOK Apparently adapted from the sort of book which keeps the shelves warm in The Works, Andrea Di Stefano’s The Informer shows an equal paucity of ambition, all soundtracked by a shop-demonstration mode of Dark Ominous Tones™. Between the cardboard characters and clockwork plot mechanism, I’m surprised that the cast and crew managed to channel the concentration to finish making it.
It's like Russell Crowe handed down the mantle of po-faced, put-upon, anti-hero Family Man™ to Liam Neeson, he gave it to Matt Damon, and now Matt's passed it on to Joel Kinnaman and we all have to go through the cycle again, nodding politely and pretending to be impressed by the fight choreography when none of the shaky-cam shots therein last for more than a fifth of a second*1.
BOOGIE Kinnaman simmers throughout, precisely the performance needed for a role which could have been written by a computer. Meanwhile, Rosamund Pike and Clive Owen plough through the screenplay like they’re resigned to starring in TV procedural cop dramas now. Ana De Armas is in this as The Girl One, the big-eyed wife of the hero who spends the film flitting between simpering and screaming.
The villains of the piece are pretty clearly defined, and it was only ever going to end one way. Fair enough. And yet the movie could have cut to the Directed By credit at any moment and I’d have been absolutely fine with that. I had no emotional involvement with this film either way. Worse, I suspect that’s intentional.
TALLADEGA How, in a world where Sicario exists, does a thriller as clock-punchingly perfunctory as The Informer even get made? I mean, I know how movies get made, but why was this greenlit? Who read through this screenplay and decided it was bringing something new or worthwhile to 2019? Whose favourite film will this absolute, unremitting filler actually be?
Don’t get me wrong, The Informer is never bad*2.
But I think it might have been more interesting if it was...
*1 The honourable exception being the 1-on-1 scrap in the prison dorm, which goes to the ground almost instantly and is just grappling and grunting until it's over within 90 seconds. That part is a far more realistic depiction of how most fights work. Unfortunately it's also boring as hell to watch, and is the reason than movie-fighting was developed for movies.
That's right, The Informer really can't win either way... [ BACK ]
*2 Clive Owen, though. Clive Owen is bad.
Christ, his accent here sounds like he comes from the New York suburb of Walford... [ BACK ]
*3 Statham, Butler & Wahlberg sounds like the absolute worst solicitors' firm in the world.
Someone should make a sitcom out of that. [ BACK ]
*4 Seriously, Rosamund Pike was in Gone Girl and was fucking magnificent. What the hell are her mortgage repayments like that she's signed up for this absolute autopilot of a movie? All it's doing is using up toner by making the CV longer and dragging her Rotten Tomatoes average into the middle. Who benefits from that? [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The auditorium wasn't particularly full, given that the film in question (a moderately 'big' movie) was being released on a rainy Wednesday in the middle of a particularly busy blockbuster-season. Nevertheless, in all my years of cinema-going I have never before witnessed so many people go to the toilet during a performance, so utterly unconcerned were they with missing some vital element of the plot. Let us not drive around the houses here, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is bad. I barely even have the strength to be bitter about losing two and a half hours of my life to this, but for you dear reader, I shall try...
Quite often, the second paragraph of my review would be used to hold a brief synopsis or plot-premise. In the case of Valerian, I have no idea. Really. There's an opening montage showing mankind's future progress into space and successive diplomatic introductions to several developed alien species, and after some sledgehammer-exposition from Rutger Hauer, the story-proper begins. I think. Something like Avatar, but set on a beach and featuring small CGI armadillos that shit pearls into a well. Meanwhile, Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne play two humans who look less convincing than the animated aliens and fail to flirt (indeed, act*1) for over two hours, while Sam Spruell and Clive Owen pull that 'I've made a terrible mistake' expression in lieu of emoting alongside their lines. The five minute pole-dancing scene featuring Rihanna isn't even the worst part of the film, although it's as inexplicable as everything else.
So from the meandering gibberish of the poorly-established narrative, through the horrifyingly executed 'Han/Leia' dynamic of Valerian and Laureline, the piss-weak performances of inconsequential supporting characters, and to the desperate attempts to bed the property in as the cornerstone of a cinematic franchise, there is no aspect of this film which does not anger, baffle or disappoint. Valerian owes so much to The Phantom Menace that it's had to take out a loan from John Carter just to keep up the repayments*2. Even the countless other sci-fi flicks which exist solely as regurgitators of clichés and genre-tropes usually do so with more narrative coherence than this.
The final presentation is full of moments you know were fantastic in the mind of Luc Besson. So it's a shame really that as both screenwriter and director*3, he completely failed to translate any of that to the screen. Judging by the way the dialogue clatters off the tongues of the performers, I suspect Luc typed the script in his native French and then just ran it through Google Translate for the cast to read. I'm not sure what's more excruciating, when the film tries to be funny and cool, or those moments when it thinks it actually has some message to impart. The third act features an outstandingly distracting diatribe about the effects of economic anxiety and protectionist politics, which in any other contemporary movie could be seen as a quasi-satirical statement on the real world. Here however, it comes off as a cack-handed attempt to convince the audience that they haven't just spent the last two hours watching Besson's computer-animated cheese dream*4.
I suppose if you could credit Valerian with anything, it would be the visuals on display. It's all 'pretty', but in that way where everything's been over-designed to the point where each new scene gives you a different level of headache. The film looks like a teenager won the Euromillions and blew the lot on making a Jupiter Ascending fan-film.
Luc Besson goes from strength to strength, finding new and inventive ways of annoying me. That should be applauded, at least.
Stabbing your own eyes for fun.
No.
No.
No.
Yes.
Not that I heard, but I spent a lot of the film shouting under my breath.
Level 2: Well, this movie features R&B fembot Rihanna, who was also in the execrable Battleship alongside Liam 'Qui-Gon' Neeson.
*1 Dane DeHaan spends this entire movie acting as if he passed the audition doing an impersonation of Keanu Reeves. I wish I was joking. The stupid thing is, I like Dane DeHaan. I like Cara Delevingne. I have no idea what's happened here. No wait it's Luc Besson, isn't it?.. [ BACK ]
*2 And remember, I say this as someone who loves both The Phantom MenaceandJohn Carter. Yeah, I'm that guy. [ BACK ]
*3 No, I haven’t read the comics that this is based on. Besson has made a film so that I don’t have to. Allegedly. [ BACK ]
*4 I've written far more words here than I intended, but I cannot slate this film emphatically enough. It's a horribly ironic state of affairs when the only way to truly appreciate how awful Valerian actually is would be to watch it on a big screen, yet at the same time I cannot condone that in any way, shape or form. Please take my word for it. Apart from anything else, I don't want the film to make the money which would encourage any manner of sequel or expansion. Even if you've got one of those subscription type-cards and it doesn't cost you any more to sit and watch the movie, there'll still be some manner of transaction between the cinema owner, the distributor and the studio. Luc Besson doesn't care if you enjoy this film or not, he just wants the figures to show that you've seen it. Please do not humour him. It is worse than Transformers: The Last Knight, and I do not say that lightly. At least with that movie I could enjoy taking the piss out of it, Valerian doesn't even deserve that energy... [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
