Just another Tuesday

 

"Gemini Man" is a 2019 US film starring Will Smith in three different roles. Smith portrays a retired and disillusioned former sniper, Henry, whose last mission was the killing of a high profile Russian agent and bio-terrorist. Or maybe not, since Henry soon realizes that the agent was innocent, and that people inside the DIA (the intelligence agency Henry worked for) are spinning a vast conspiracy...and that *he* is the next target. 

When Henry and his female love interest manage to escape a DIA elimination patrol, agency head Clay Verris sends out a trained assassin who can mysteriously anticipate Henry´s every move. The hitman, known as Junior, turns out to be a younger cloned version of Henry himself! After the usual chases (somewhat unusually taking place in Cartegena and Budapest), Henry manages to "turn" Junior, who have exactly the same fears and doubts as Henry himself struggled with all his life. Verris therefore sends out *another* cloned version of Henry, called Senior, from which all such emotions have been erased. Indeed, that seems to be the point of the conspiracy: to breed a new race of cloned super-soldiers, who feel no remorse for killing and are disposable, thereby "saving" ordinary Americans from going to war themselves...

Funniest comment in the film is when a Russian named Yuri tells Henry: "So your government, which you have worked for all your life, is trying to kill you? And you are angry? In Russia, we call this Tuesday!". (As in "just another day".)

"Gemini Man" (gemini means "twins" in Latin) isn´t the best film around, but it´s much better than "After Earth", in which Will Smith starred against his real son. Here, he stars both himself and his own son?! Without the clone gimmick, the film would probably be quietly forgotten, but with it, it works tolerably. Budapest in Hungary is a magnificent city, although it looks almost computer-animated in this version, and I sure hope the fight between Henry and Junior in the local catacombs was actually filmed back in Hollywood! 

The film is actually on now, as we speak, on a Swedish cable channel...