Chief among Brogan’s shadowy enemies is his former Army buddy Clay Varris ( Clive Owen in scenery-chewing villain mode), now a military-industrial biotech tycoon who is working on a secret unit of perfect warriors, all genetically engineered to kill without remorse.

But Machiavellian insiders at the DIA have other ideas. Weary of the assassination game, Brogan now plans to retire and spend his autumn years fishing off the Georgia coast. Needless to say, the screenplay spends very little time agonizing over the morality of state-sanctioned murder before the body count starts rising again. After terminating 72 bad guys with superhuman precision, Brogan is finally starting to suffer pangs of conscience. Smith stars as Henry Brogan, undefeated champion hit man for the Defense Intelligence Agency, a thinly disguised version of the CIA. But both director and star have done much better work before. theaters, with a worldwide rollout to follow. His enduring marquee power, in tandem with Lee’s track record, could still generate big numbers when Paramount releases the movie Oct. That said, the huge profits scored by Aladdin and Suicide Squad prove that the 51-year-old star still commands enough global fan loyalty to elevate even mediocre films into critic-proof hits. Smith’s action blockbusters have helped nudge his total career-spanning box office take beyond $8 billion, but in recent years he has mostly favored low-key, worthy dramas that left critics cold and audiences lukewarm - which may explain why he has now reunited with Bad Boys producer Jerry Bruckheimer to make Gemini Man, with two more chapters in their Miami cops franchise also in the pipeline.īehind its high-tech visual gimmicky, Gemini Man is a dumb, depthless, undemanding fanboy pleaser which plants Smith dangerously close to Liam Neeson and Nicolas Cage in the midlife action-man league. The thin premise, about a secret program of rogue government assassins, also feels thuddingly familiar in a world where Jason Bourne, John Wick and Villanelle on Killing Eve are all mainstream anti-heroes. Despite a few deftly handled set-piece action sequences, the formulaic screenplay, stock characters, leaden dialogue and wobbly accents feel gratingly amateurish in places. Gemini Man is arguably a significant leap forward for visual effects but a backward step for gripping, sophisticated thrillers. Was it worth dusting off this clunky pre-millennial screenplay? Frankly, not really.

Gemini by Chris Owen