It’d been awhile since Will Smith had a real hit. While the Fresh Prince of Belair in Black who only weighed Seven Pounds as a Bad Boy was once all that and a bag of chips “in Miami,” a series of less-than-stellar films in the 2010s made it seem like Smith’s latter years might be best spent as a producer (The Karate Kid, Annie) for family friendly films.
But 2019 might’ve been the resurgent year of Ali in his Pursuit of Happyness that announced Smith was back to take Showtime to the Wild Wild West. With a turn that had people seeing the Genie in a non-Robin Williams-sort-of-way in Aladdin and playing a version of his spy self in Spies in Disguise, Smith re-set the bar for what we could expect from him.
Was Gemini Man up to that caliber? Not quite. But with legendary director Ang Lee, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and writer David Benioff (Game of Thrones!), Smith had a team to give the old actioner a go. Sure, he played himself and his younger clone thanks to the de-aging CGI that Hollywood is falling for (see: The Irishman), but there was plot, excitement, and even a bit of character development (no man is an island) for his character Henry.
On the 4K pack, you can see a VFX scene breakdown, an alternate opening, and deleted scenes. Special featurettes include “The Genesis of Gemini Man,” “Facing Your Younger Self,” “The Future Is Now,” “Setting the Action,” “Next Level Detail,” and “The Vision of Ang Lee.”
