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: "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"

"Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" is a very creative movie, but it's a shallow sort of creativity.

Based on the comics by  Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières, "Valerian" is kind of a goofy James Bond-in-space adventure with tons of aliens and CGI. Written and directed by Luc Besson, it makes his "The Fifth Element" look like a hard and gritty drama.

Government agents Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and his partner and hoped-to-be lover, Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne), traipse through the galaxy getting into and out of all sorts of scrapes. The plot is barely comprehensible -- not that it's really meant to be -- having to do with a refugee race of aliens, a critter MacGuffin and the prerequisite sneering villain.

The tone is overtly comic book, and the expensive digital imagery ($180 million, I hear tell) has a deliberately cartoony look. I never quite knew how I was supposed to take the movie, or its characters. Certainly, we never feel any kind of connection to them. They're like our avatars in a video game that can't control all that well.

I'm not sure about the casting of the two leads. DeHaan, with his tired eyes and spindly frame, certainly doesn't look the part of an action movie hero. I'm actually OK with that: not every male body we see onscreen needs to have a six-pack and cannonball biceps. DeHaan plays Valerian as a smirking playboy who thinks he's finally found true love in Laureline, and tries to live up to that.

Delevingne brings some kick-ass authority to her role, a duty-bound soldier who's also able to look past the rule book when it doesn't fit circumstances. She continually puts off Valerian's advances, but the way she glances at him when he walks away tell us she secretly wants it to go on.

Things center around Alpha Station, a former Earth orbit platform that grew and grew as humans encountered more alien species and incorporated them into their galactic government. Eventually it got so big its gravitational pull threatened Earth's, so Alpha has traveled millions of miles over the last 400 years, and is home to multitudes.

The creature effects are quite impressive. Some, like those from planet Mül, look like stretched-out humans with translucent skin and no hair. Other aliens resemble the ogres from the "Lord of the Rings" movies, or butterflies, or sea slugs. Some are even liquid or gaseous, contained within space suit for interaction with humanoids, and others are living machines.

Combined with the wonders of Alpha and beyond, there's no denying "Valerian" is a feast for the eyes.

In one neat sequence, we enter a marketplace that exists in another dimension, so visitors don special eyewear to interact with the peddlers. Valerian sticks a laser pistol and his hand into a special gizmo, so he can shoot at bad guys while the rest of him remains phased in safety.

The adventure, though, soon grows tiresome as it seems there are no consequences to be encountered. For every obstacle or enemy, there's some kooky solution involving cool technology or interaction with a bizarre creature.

For instance, when Laureline needs to track down the lost Valerian, she seeks out a jellyfish that she has to, uh... interface with in an interesting way to learn his location. When roles are reversed, Valerian recruits a "glamopod" named Bubble who can transform her appearance. She's played by Rihanna, who does a very sexy and athletic burlesque routine as her introduction.

When she has to do dialogue, though... ugh. Rihanna can certainly perform, but she can't act.

Others rounding out the cast are Herbie Hancock (!) as the intergalactic minister calling the shots, Clive Owen as the local commander with a history, Sam Spruell as his upright number two, and Ethan Hawke as a cowboy pimp.

I had fun for awhile watching "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," but it grows tiresome, like a circus show that runs too long. There's only so much bedazzlement the eye can take in before becoming strained.

We jump from dizzying scene to scene like we're progressing through a role-playing video game, and waiting at the end is a prize we don't really want that badly.

Video review: "Words and Pictures"

Maybe it’s because of Robin Williams’ recent passing, but “Words and Pictures” reminds me a lot of “Dead Poets Society.” Though instead of featuring one brilliant, kooky and passionate teacher, we get two – and they fall in love.

The setup is that the pair, who both work at an elite prep school, are antagonists whose clash of philosophies and personalities drives their students to creative heights. Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche) is a famous painter now suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. She claims not to care about forming personal relationships with her students or colleagues; for her, it’s all about creating images that sear themselves onto the brain and the soul.

Jack Marcus (Clive Owen) was once a famous writer, now a wastrel drunk who serves as the school’s longstanding jester and provocateur. Despite his self-destructive tendencies, “Mr. Mark” cares like hell about inspiring his pupils, cajoling them through highly unconventional means – he dubs haiku poetry “the first Twitter.”

After hearing Delsanto make disparaging comments about the power of words, Marcus launches an unofficial war on pictures, which carries them through the school year and various developments, including him being threatened with the loss of his job.

Binoche and Owen make for an appealing couple, a pair of gorgeous middle-aged loners who are so wrapped up in their own egos and miseries that they can’t grasp the golden prize right in front of them. Their banter is caustic and even mean-spirited, yet somehow the magnetic pull between them shines through the insults.

Smart, quirky and sexy, “Words and Pictures” reminds us why learning, and teaching, can be so enriching.

Extra features are somewhat scanty in quantity but substantial in quality. Director Fred Schepisi, a veritable Hollywood legend (“Barbarosa,” “Roxanne,” “Six Degrees of Separation”) still cranking out movies in his 70s, provides a feature-length commentary track. There’s also a 19-minute making-of featurette.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Boys Are Back"

The thing I liked about "The Boys Are Back" is the same thing that ultimately limits it as a film: Its unstructured nature.

This drama about a single father struggling to raise two sons, each from a different marriage, unfolds organically, without the conventional three-act structure. Some notable events happen in their lives, but the bulk of the movie is spent with the threesome hanging out in their ramshackle home, getting into arguments and having some boyish fun.

It's a good movie, with a powerful performance by Clive Owen as the father, and Nicholas McAnulty and George MacKay are knockouts as the sons.

Joe Warr is an English guy and sportswriter at a major Australian newspaper. His job has him gone a lot, so when his wife (Laura Fraser) passes away fairly suddenly, Joe realizes that he's become something of a stranger to their 6-year-old son Artie (McAnulty). He confides to a friend that his boy views him as a guy who visits them every few weeks and brings him presents.

Joe and Artie set out on a road trip to connect, and this morphs into a laid-back approach to parenting that eventually becomes a creed: "Just say yes." Instead of burdening his child with a lot of rules and chores, he allows the house to become a shabby playroom where they can throw water balloons, jump into full bathtubs, or do anything else they want that's irresponsible (but not unsafe).

This draws the tut-tutting of the mothers of the community, which only encourages Joe more.

The dynamic changes when Harry (MacKay), who's about 14, comes to live with them. Harry's the offspring of Joe's first family, which he abandoned when he got Artie's mother pregnant. Harry quickly adapts to the free-for-all, but as you might expect he's got some deeper-seated issues to resolve with Dad.

Director Scott Hicks ("Shine") and screenwriter Allan Cubitt, adapting the autobiographical novel by Simon Carr, adopt the boys-will-be-boys attitude of the protagonist into their storytelling style. As a result, the interactions between father and sons feel authentic, while some of the things transpiring outside their little clan can feel contrived.

For example, Joe faces increasing pressure from his boss to go back out in the field, which builds to a crisis where he may lose his job. But this subplot is dropped suddenly, without resolution. A potential romance between Joe and a single mother (Emma Booth) likewise gets the short shrift.

I also didn't care for the device of Joe's dead wife appearing to him to have conversations about their son. It dredges up too many other movies with dead lovers who return as ghosts.

The movie is at its best when it's just the father and his sons, trying to engage them in a way that's nurturing but masculine. Despite societal changes that's still freewheeling, uncharted territory, and "The Boys Are Back" explores it with gusto and heart.

3 stars

DVD review: "Duplicity"

A clever, sexy caper, "Duplicity" marked Julia Roberts' big return to leading-lady status after several years of sporadic supporting roles. Audiences seemed to shrug with indifference, but might want to give it a second look now that it's out on video.

"Duplicity" again pairs Roberts with her "Closer" lover, Clive Owen, as a pair of spies who turn their espionage skills to making a killing in the private sector so they can retire in leisure. Their game is to triple-cross a pair of cosmetic companies, one led by Paul Giamatti and the other by Tom Wilkinson, and cash in on the secretive new product one of them has in the works.

Roberts works for one corporation, but secretly spies for the other where Owen is on the security team, and meanwhile they're maneuvering to have the formula for themselves. Much of the film is concerned with the various schemes and crises that emerge as they draw nearer to their goal.

But really the film is about their relationship, and whether two people who have spent most of their lives deceiving others can truly ever be in love, which at its core is an expression of trust. The scenes where the pair meet up in clandestine locations and verbally spar, trying to test each other's loyalty, are reason alone to justify a rental.

Extras are confined to a single item: A feature-length commentary track by writer/director Tony Gilroy ("Michael Clayton") and editor/producer (and brother) John Gilroy. The pair make for entertaining and informative guides, providing behind-the-scenes insights as well as casual banter.

Among other things, Gilroy reveals that he originally wrote the screenplay for Stephen Spielberg, with the proviso that if he passed on it, he'd let Gilroy direct. The siblings also note that the film's opening scene in Dubai was a half-hearted addition that they ended up liking so much, they put it before the title sequence that originally began the film.

Movie: 3 stars
Extras: 2.5 stars

Catching up with "The International"

"The International," a spy thriller starring Clive Owen, hasn't caught on with audiences. That's surprising, since it has as its chief villain an entity that everyone seems to be pretty P.O.'d at right now: a bank.

Owen plays a burned-out Interpol agent hot on the trail of an international bank that's been dabbling in arms sales. Seems they're trying to cash in on the debt incurred by various military conflicts around the world by fomenting them in the appropriate places. Naomi Watts plays a New York D.A. working with Owen.

It's a terribly underwritten female lead part; ostensibly Owen and Watts are co-equal partners, but as is usual in Hollywood, the guy gets the meatier role. At one point near the end he gives her speech that essentially translates as, "All the really hard and dangerous stuff is about to start, and that's my job, so run along home and take care of your kids." I don't normally go in for a lot of feminist film theory, but you don't have to be Gloria Steinham to get riled by the shabby treatment of female characters.

"The International" is a well-executed potboiler, although it's hard to shake the feeling that we've seen it a hundred times before. Plus, all the people that the good guys track down have a nasty habit of dying soon after. Apparently everyone involved in the bank is constantly being watched by other bank toadies, ready to pull the trigger on them rather than let them give away their secrets.

This gets a bit old, and quickly. At one point Owen and Watts talk to a politician who provides them with a lot of juicy information. They ask for more time, and he says he'll tell them everything they want to know right after he gives this speech. I actually turned to Jean in the theater at this point and said, "Yes, I'd be happy to help you, but I'm scheduled to die in the next scene."

Sure enough, he's soon wearing his brains externally.

For a movie about financial malfeasance, there sure is a lot of violence, and well-staged by director Tom Tykwer. There's one long shootout inside the Guggenheim Museum that's as good a piece of cinematic action I've seen in a while. Owen has just captured the assassin he's been chasing, and immediately a gang of gunmen open fire on them. The two adversaries immediately become partners, dueling the enemy in the Guggenheim's iconic corkscrew rotunda. I was fairly blown away by this sequence; I can't imagine the museum folks would let them tear apart the place, so the set design is pretty impressive.

"The International" isn't exactly fresh, but it's well-done middling entertainment on a Saturday night. It's worth the coin.

2.5 stars out of four