Review: "Gemini Man"

It’s one thing for a character to say they’re haunted by ghosts; it’s quite another to show the ghosts. “Gemini Man” does the former while scrimping on the latter.

I’ll be straight: I was prepared to duck the screening for “Gemini Man.” It’s a busy time of year and there’s a lot of movies to pay attention to. The trailers, in which Will Smith, playing a world-class assassin who encounters a younger CGI’d double of himself, looked pretty goofy.

Digital alteration of reality continues to advance, and we’ve all seen those freaky-deaky “deep fake” videos of Bill Hader transforming into Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatnot. But the truth is it still hasn’t gotten to the point where it’s totally convincing. So I was prepared to give “Gemini” a skip.

Then I saw the creative team: Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) directing? Two of the screenwriters are David Benioff (“Game of Thrones”) and Billy Ray (an Oscar nominee for “Captain Phillips”)? The credentials are there, maybe the film’s better than advertised?

Nope.

It’s not a bad movie by any means. It’s got lots of vigorous action scenes, including a killer one where the two warriors battle on motorcycles, with the younger one using the bike itself as a weapon. There are also exotic international locales, a sniveling villain, and other hallmarks of the spy thriller genre. In terms of action set pieces, it’s basically a low-rent Bond film.

But that’s all it is. Lee and the screenwriters (Darren Lemke is the third) make aspirations toward something deeper and more meaningful, but keep falling back on stunts and shootouts instead of exploring the main characters’ inner psyches.

Smith plays Henry Brogan, a legendary sniper for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He’s spent 30 years making impossible kill shots, dubbed AMFs -- “Adios, Mother Flipper,” or thereabouts -- such as the one that opens the picture of a terrorist getting it through the window of a speeding European bullet train. Now after 72 confirmed kills he’s ready to hang it up, citing age, fading skills and the aforementioned ghosts.

Turns out the last kill wasn’t a clean one, but cooked up by old nemesis Clay Verris, played by Clive Owen in full jowls-and-scowls mode. He runs the titular Gemini program, a quasi-military force used by governments to clean up their messes. And they’ve concluded that Henry is the loose tie that needs to be snipped.

We’ve seen this before in every spy franchise, from Bond to Bourne to Jack Reacher. Someone in the government decides the veteran killer needs to be killed, racking up tremendous deaths and expenditure of resources in the process, necessitating even more stuff to throw at the guy.

At some point I’d like to see a movie where an armchair spymaster says, “You know what? Better just leave him be.”

Gemini’s secret weapon is Junior (also Smith), who was cloned from Henry’s DNA. The young man has spent his entire life being trained by Verris to be the ultimate killer. He’s got all of Henry’s moves plus a few parkour-style bits where he bounces off walls and such. But does he have the same hidden conscious eating away at him, suggesting all his jobs may not be on the up-and-up?

As I said, the likeness is not terrible, akin to Smith during his “Fresh Prince” days. He acted out the role normally and then a younger version of his face was digitally stitched on. It works OK in fleeting shots or darkness, but when the camera has to hold in bright light, it has a very video game feel.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Danny, a DIA agent sent to tail Henry who ends up becoming his capable ally. She and Henry flirt in between the firefights, while pretending not to. Douglas Hodge and Benedict Wong are old friends brought in to help out.

The dialogue is truly cringe-worthy at times, with lines such as “It’s like watching the Hindenburg crash into the Titanic.” My personal (dis)favorite is Henry waking up Danny in bed and she pulls a pistol on him. “It’s not gun time, it’s coffee time,” he purrs, handing her a brimming mug. What the…?

I was expecting “Gemini Man” to be more a psychological thriller interspersed with action scenes about two hardcases with intertwined identities, a la “Face/Off.” But it’s just a straight-up action movie featuring Old Will Smith and digitally de-aged Will Smith.

It’s garden-variety gunplay, with a Benjamin Button twist.

Review: "Aladdin"

The part we feared most, Will Smith as the genie, actually turns out to be not so bad.

This is Will Smith, after all, an entertainer not without his charms. His genie is goofy and funny and appropriately self-important. The blue CGI body is still a little off. And although he doesn’t make us forget Robin Williams’ manic-yet-slyly-tender voice work in the original animated “Aladdin,” Smith turns out to be an able, updated substitute.

The rest of the cast…

Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott are fine as Aladdin and Princess Jasmine, all a-twinkle and a-dimple as the comely young Arabian couple. (He’s Egyptian and she’s British/Indian, which isn’t too egregiously off by Hollywood standards.) I liked the cartoon version of the sultan as an affable dolt; Navid Negahban seems more haunted than sympathetic.

The big letdown is Jafar, a far fall for one of Disney’s most scrumptious villains.

He had that scarecrow frame and twisty little beard, hooded eyes and a marvelous baritone growl (supplied by Jonathan Freeman). Marwan Kenzari just looks like some guy they plucked out of the street bazaar and put into a vizier’s outfit. Worst of all, his Jafar has a high, almost whiny voice. Not surprisingly, he’s the one character who doesn’t get to do his song from the animated version.

When it comes to screen villains, tenors go home.

You know the story: gold-hearted street rat thief Aladdin (Massoud) falls hard for Jasmine, the princess of Agrabah, who is being courted by a string of foreign princes. After picking up a magical lamp, he summons the big blue genie (Smith) to sorcery him into ersatz royalty, makes a big entrance, and then things go south because of all the lying -- plus those nasty Jafar schemes.

Of all the cartoon movies Disney has turned into a live-action remake, “Aladdin” falls smack in the middle. It’s a bright, fast-paced spectacle that isn’t just a shot-for-shot remake of the original. Director Guy Ritchie, known for turning stodgy Sherlock Holmes into a knife-fighting action star, co-wrote the screenplay with John August.

Some of it works really well. The magic carpet ride to the song “A Whole New World” is still a dazzler, as Aladdin and Jasmine cruise the world and discover love. The entrance of the fictional “Prince Ali” has all the jazz and verve of the original. I appreciated the updating of Jasmine’s character into a strong-willed young woman who doesn’t just resent having the sultan pick her husband, but actually vies to take the sultan’s place.

Other stuff lands with a clunk. Abu the monkey is a little too CGI for his own good. I disliked having Jafar’s henchman, the parrot Iago, relegated to mere dumb beast. The snappy repertoire between the haughty Jafar and his Bronx-cheering, Gilbert Gottfried-voiced pet was the animated film’s main comic engine.

A couple of new songs just plain don’t play. In the oddest one, “Speechless,” Jasmine starts belting while the guards are leading her away, and all her enemies start dissolving into dust a la “Avengers: Infinity War,” and I wondered if she’d suddenly acquired magical powers.

Similarly, a romance contrived for genie and Jasmine’s handmaiden (Nasim Pedrad), falls rather flat. He’s a world-bending cosmic powerhouse -- why he gotta have a dame?

I can’t say as I really wanted a live-action “Aladdin,” but now that it’s here I object to its existence less than I thought I would. My kids enjoyed the heck out of it, and even the stretches that had me sighing with impatience weren’t so interminably long they had me wishing I was somewhere else.

Video review: "Suicide Squad"

People seem to want to have an instant relationship with movies these days. Large swaths of the moviegoing public had judged the “Ghostbusters” reboot long before it came to theaters. Folks fell in love with the new “Stars Wars” sequel in a similar fashion, seeing it as the antidote to the unfairly maligned prequels.

After the Sturm und Drang of the lackluster “Batman v Superman,” I think many were not willing to judge its follow-up, “Suicide Squad,” with an open heart. And while the movie’s certainly got some problems, especially in the first half, it’s actually a notable variation on the gradually tiring superhero genre.

Instead of all-powerful do-gooders racked with guilt over their abilities, we are given a half-dozen flawed villains who are given a chance to get out of prison to work for the government. It seems there’s some sort of energy vortex in the middle of the city that could destroy the world, so our gang of creeps is sent in to take care of it.

The A-listers are Will Smith and Margot Robbie as Deadshot and Harley Quinn, respectively. He’s an ace assassin who never misses, while she’s a former psychiatrist who turned into a deranged go-go girl under the influence of her even crazier boyfriend, the Joker (Jared Leto). Alas, if you’ve watched the trailers for “Suicide Squad” you’ve already seen a good chunk of Leto’s entire role. The Joker’s not the main bad guy, just a colorful backgrounder here.

I’m not even going to list the others, because there’s too many of them, plus other secondary figures. Suffice to say they’re a pleasing multicultural mix of killers and psychopaths.

Things take too long in the first half, with quick riffs on each character to introduce them. But it all builds up nicely to a carefully choreographed orgy of mayhem and CGI special effects.

“Suicide Squad” may not be a great super hero/villain flick, but it’s more entertaining and fun than snap judgments might suggest. Sometimes you have to just wait a little bit and let the movie come to you.

The lynchpin of the bonus features is an extended cut that adds 13 minutes of previously unseen footage. You can also watched synchronized pop-up content related to each scene using the VUDU app.

Other extras include seven making-of featurettes and a gag reel.

Movie:



Extras:

Review: "Suicide Squad"

If “Batman v Superman” was a hot mess, then its DC Comics companion, “Suicide Squad” is an even hotter mess -- but also a more enjoyable one.

It’s essentially a “Dirty Dozen” spin on the superhero genre, taking a disparate gaggle of bad guys out of the clink and throwing them into a squad of supposed do-gooders. They fight with each other and rebel against their overlords, and eventually get around to doing some good.

The movie takes waaaaay too long during the “putting together the team” portion of the movie, but it pays off with a second half that is virtually non-stop action and CGI-heavy mayhem. Our gang of misfits actually transforms from sneering baddies into those in whose hands the fate of the very world rests.

(Have you noticed that all superhero movies lately are about the end of the world? That ol’ Earth sure is a vulnerable planetoid.)

The best bet writer/director David Ayer (“End of Watch”) makes is not trying to spread around the screen time and backstory evenly. It’s a first-among-equals approach, with Will Smith’s Deadshot and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn as the main characters. Everyone else is essentially an add-on.

Deadshot is a merciless assassin who never misses with a firearm, but has a soft spot in the shape of his beloved 11-year-old daughter. He’s a “serial killer who takes credit cards,” so if fighting for the U.S. government is the price he has to pay to be reunited with her, then so be it. Viola Davis is commanding and ice-blooded as Amanda Walker, the intelligence chief running the show.

I should mention all the squad members have an explosive device implanted in their spine, and if they disobey the hardcase leader of their unit, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), they get blown up.

Harley Quinn is written as a scene-stealer, and Robbie milks it for everything she’s got. Harley is a former psychiatrist who got turned bad by her jailbird boyfriend (more on him in a minute), and is now a flirty, sexy, homicidal maniac. Her superhero costume consists of barely-there shorts, cutoff shirt, smeared makeup and fishnets. Her favorite M.O. is to bash people in the face with a baseball bat.

It’s a crazy, off-kilter character, a woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon and a tool. She’s somewhere between a feminist nightmare and empowerment icon.

Her guy is the Joker, played in this iteration by Jared Leto, utterly horrifying in bright green hair, facial tattoos and apparently stainless steel teeth. If Harley’s unhinged, he’s the claw hammer that pulled her screws loose. Jack Nicholson’s J-man was murderously theatrical and Heath Ledger’s was crazily calculating; Leto’s is just crazy for the sake of crazy.

For a while we think the movie’s building Joker up as the main villain. But it turns out he’s basically just a street gangster, not a world-beater.

The rest of the team, in quick order, is: Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an Aussie blade master who’s got a lot of ‘tude; El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a South-Central gangbanger who can produce ferocious flames from his hands, but has made a vow of pacifism after personal loss; Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Abgaje), a misanthropic lizard dude with super strength and reptilian skin; Slipknot (Adam Beach), a Native American warrior and mystery man; and Katana (Karen Fukuhara), a Japanese swordswoman whose blade steals the souls of her enemies.

Certainly the most visually interesting is Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), a dark sorceress who has actually possessed the body of a goody-goody archaeologist. She becomes a ghost-like apparition, seemingly made out of smoke and ash, with baleful eyes glowing out at us.

(At one point Delevingne breaks out into an odd, snake-y, vaguely Egyptian dance move. I kept wondering, “Is this supposed to be… scary? Because it’s actually kinda making me laugh.)

No one is going to confuse “Suicide Squad” with great moviemaking. It’s carelessly plotted and has too many hanger-on characters. But I can genuinely say I was entertained during long stretches, especially in the second hour.

Look at it this way: if the first DC Comics movie wasn’t any good, and this one is half a good movie, maybe the next one can get all the way to super.

Review: "Focus"

"Focus," a new crime caper/romance starring Will Smith and Margot Robbie, is smart and sexy as hell ... for a little while, at least. Like the confidence men and women it depicts, it's good at the short game but stretches too far for the long con, and falls short.

The first and last thirds are borderline dazzling, as Nicky (Smith) and Jess (Robbie) pull off a variety of scams, heists and outright pilfering. The middle section, though, drags us down so much that it sucks vital juices from the remainder.

Will Smith is playing the classic Will Smith character -- skilled, smart and cooler than thou. Nicky is the son and grandson of legendary con men, and is making quite a mark of his own. What's interesting about this depiction is that, rather than the classic lone wolf, Nicky is the leader of a team of dozens of thieves who get together for a variety of small scores, and then disperse.

Brennan Brown and Adrian Martinez play his chief lieutenants, and the closest thing to friends a guy like Nicky allows himself to have. Martinez steals many a scene with his droll delivery and sexualized quips.

The early section is about them working New Orleans in the week leading up to the Super Bowl. They lift watches right off your wrist, nab wallets or pocketbooks, use your credit cards to run up merchandise that they then sell online and pocket the cash. These scenes are much like a well-coordinated ballet, which writer/directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa ably stage.

But then... the girl walks in. Dames usually mark the commencement of troubles in these types of movies, and Jess is no exception. A budding thief, she takes instruction from Nicky, becomes his pupil, partner and lover, and it becomes a contest to see who's putting one over on who.

Unless of course -- they actually love each other???

Nicky teaches the art of distraction, getting to know your marks and being able to persuade anyone of anything. "You get their focus, you take whatever you want," he says. He goes on to prove his skills in an elaborate ruse that seems like a complete disaster, until it isn't.

After a hiatus of three years, for reasons I'll not spoil, the pair finds themselves together again in Buenos Aires, with both having their eye on the same mark: Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro), a fabulously wealthy and arrogant race car team owner.

Nicky has been hired to pretend to sell his fuel consumption algorithm -- a classic nonsensical MacGuffin -- to his chief competitor. But Garriga's stern security chief, Owens (Gerald McRaney), suspects that something is up. Jess, meanwhile, claims to have gone straight and is simply dating Garriga -- probably for just his money, but in her line that's considered legit.

Robbie and Smith have some real sizzle onscreen, especially as we're forced to guess how much of their steamy romance is pure smokescreen.

(I do feel compelled to point out their 22-year age difference. Smith's young stud-on-the-make days are dwindling, but he seems determined to milk out every ounce.)

"Focus" has got plenty of head-jerking plot twists, surprises and double-takes. Its squishy center, though, robs the film of too much momentum.

Video review: "Men in Black 3"

"Men in Black 3" has an obligatory feel to it, like it was made to provide a few people a career boost and satisfy quarterly profit margins for the studio. Arriving a full decade after the second (horrible) film in the franchise, "MIB3" is reasonably entertaining, contains some nice special effects and a few interesting new characters.

But there's very little heart and soul in it, making it the perfect home video rental. Pop it in, get a few yukks and thrills, and never think of it again.

Agents J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones) are back as members of the secret government agency that protects humankind from the knowledge that bug-eyed aliens are living among them in disguise. But when a particularly nasty alien criminal named Boris the Animal fiddles with the flow of time, J must travel back to 1969 and team up with Agent K's younger self (Josh Brolin) to set things right.

The 1960s fashions and vibe are a hoot, and I liked how director Barry Sonnenfeld and his crew make sure the aliens from back then resemble products of era-appropriate pop culture. (Think Sleestaks and planets full of apes.)

"MIB3" may just be warmed-up leftovers, but at least it slides down pretty smooth.

The movie comes with decent extras, though you'll have to shell out for the pricier Blu-ray editions to get the best stuff.

The DVD comes with only a making-of documentary and a music video of Pitbull's "Back in Time."
With the Blu-ray combo pack, you add a gag reel, three more making-of featurettes, special effects progression reels and a "Spot the Alien" game. Go for the 3-D Blu-ray version, and you add a pair of extras focusing on 3-D modeling.

Please note, "Men in Black 3" arrives on video Friday, Nov. 30.

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Men in Black III"

"Men in Black III" gets brownie points simply for not being "Men in Black II."

It's been 10 years since "MIIB," and while I've completely forgotten the plot of that movie, the bad taste it left in my mouth lingers. I remember thinking it was one of the laziest sequels I'd ever seen, simply taking the quirky original film and repackaging its key elements for a cynical, money-grubbing do-over.

Despite that, it made something like a half-billion dollars, so the question becomes: why did it take a decade to make another movie? The jaded, cynical critic in me can't help but take note that the careers of star Will Smith and director Barry Sonnenfeld have not exactly been afire as of late.

Sonnenfeld's been stuck doing low-profile television since the disastrous "RV" six years ago, which also pretty much marked the end of Robin Williams as a leading man. Smith hasn't starred in anything since 2008, when he gave us the lackluster "Seven Pounds" and the lackluster-er "Hancock."

Even if "MiB III" exists simply to gobble up cash and rejuvenate some careers, it's a reasonably engaging bit of disposable entertainment. It's not nearly as funny as it ought to be, and I kept feeling like the characters were explaining the movie to me rather than letting it just happen. But there's plenty of slapsticky action, more enjoyably scary/goofy aliens, and a few unexpected poignant moments.

Agents J (Smith) and K (Jones) are back as footmen in the Men in Black, a super-secret agency serving to protect the many alien species that are secretly residing on Earth (and the humans from them). Their jobs and their relationship have grown stale, with J frustrated with K's inability to ever open up to him. "I'm getting too old for this. I can only imagine how you feel," J riffs after a particularly nasty dust-up in a Chinese noodle shop.

Unfortunately, a superbad dude named Boris the Animal -- "It's just Boris," he repeatedly insists, not that anyone pays any attention -- breaks out of Lunar Max, the alien prison on the moon. A creepy alien with camera lenses for eyes and a pet that lives inside his hand and spits deadly spikes, Boris (Jemaine Clement) swears vengeance on K, who blew his arm off back in 1969.

Boris goes back in time and alters the temporal reality so K no longer exists. Now it's up to J to travel back to the days of hippies and decent rock 'n' roll and put things right.

Josh Brolin plays the young K, expertly mimicking Jones' curt mannerisms and high-pitched Texas drawl. The '60s-era aliens are a trip, made up to resemble extra-terrestrials from movie and TV of that time.

I really enjoyed Michael Stuhlbarg as Griffin, the sole survivor of his alien race who can see across the dimension of time and envision all possible outcomes at once. He's a got a daffy lost-puppy vibe, sweet-natured but with a bit of bite.

There's also a clever bit where J and K encounter Andy Warhol, who turns out to be another Men in Black agent in deep undercover (Bill Hader) to infiltrate the counterculture. "I'm so out of ideas I'm painting soup cans and bananas!"

The run-up to the big showdown is a blur of chases and quips, culminating in a fight on the launch pad of the Apollo 11 rocket as it's getting set to shoot the moon. There's also something about an ArcNet protecting the earth from a Boglodite invasion, and a love flame for K (played by Alice Eve when young and Emma Thompson when not) and a half a dozen other untidy story threads that screenwriter Etan Cohen never bothers to knit together.

It's hard to say that "Men in Black III" is worth the wait, since I don't get the sense much of anyone was really waiting for it. But now that it's here, at least you won't feel like zapping yourself with one of the MiB forget-it-all gizmos after watching it.

2.5 stars out of four