Dir.: Ang Lee; Cast: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong; China/USA 2019, 117 min.
Director Ang Lee has turned a screenplay by David Benioff, Billy Ray and Darren Lemke into a technical extravaganza without heart or soul.
Not even the combined firepower of Lee and his three writers can make a decent fist of this ham-fisted affair. The script has been on the back burner since 1965. In the Nineties, the late Tony Scott was supposed to direct it; Harrison Ford is one of many stars attached to the project. In the hands of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, it has now become a star vehicle for Will Smith, but why did Ang Lee – whose credentials include such classics as The Ice Storm – need to attach his name to such an undemanding, farcical pot boiler?
After having killed 72 citizens for the Defence Intelligence Agency (thinly disguised acronym for CIA), Henry Brogan (Smith) is tired at 51 and looks forward to retirement. Needless to say that boss Clay Verris (Owen) does not like the idea, and sends Junior, Henry’s cloned double, a mere stripling of 23, to finish him off. Verris is not only into ordering assassinations, he is also a bio-tech tycoon who has assembled an army of AI fighters, who are superior to humans – apart from Henry. With fellow assassin Danny Zakarweski (Winstead) and pilot Baron (Wong), Henry fights his younger Self in Columbia, Budapest and finally Georgia, where the showcase show-down takes place, whilst Junior has the un-inviable task of determining who his father his: fellow assassin Henry or Bond super villain Verris.
The digitally rejuvenated Henry fighting his older self is interesting for about five minutes, then it goes the way of all gimmicks. The same goes for the 120 frames per second pace and the high-resolution 3D widescreen technique. As we experienced in Lee’s last outing (Billy Lynn’s long half-time Walk, 2016), the overall effect is like watching an old beta-max tape on a modern wide-screen TV. What ever DoP Dion Beebe’s contribution may be worth, this is a dumb, depthless and moronic spectacle. AS
OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 OCTOBER 2019