Gemini Man: Will Smith battles his clone.

In the action thriller Gemini Man, Ang Lee tests 3D+ and ultra-high frame rate and shows off two different Will Smiths.

Does it make sense to bewail someone’s passion for new technologies? The Ang Lee case makes it difficult simply to answer “of course not” to this question. With films like Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Sense and Sensibility, the American-Taiwanese director guaranteed himself a prominent place in the cinema history books and stacks of prizes, but since he made Life of Pi, he has expressed more interest in trying out new technologies than in good storytelling.

In the action thriller Gemini Man, he tests 3D+ and ultra-high frame rate (60 frames per second) and shows off two different Will Smiths. The one that looks more like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is the computer creation. The flesh and blood Smith plays a 51-year-old sniper in the American secret service who wants to retire after one last execution in Liège. Unfortunately, his former mentor has cloned him. The first big fight between the old and the young Smith is exciting enough to maintain belief in the future of the new technology. But the script, dialogues, and character development are so weak that you wonder if there wasn’t a clone of Ang Lee in the director’s chair.