Gemini Man Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

2. The Inconsistent Pacing & Tone

Gemini Man is totally all over the place as a blockbuster, and never more than in terms of its pacing and its tone.

For starters, despite its reasonable 117-minute runtime, this thing takes a long time to get going, with the clone plot not introduced until the end of the first act, and it's almost the half-way point before the whole "CGI Will Smith" angle really comes into play.

If the first half is a slow, dull slog, the second is a frantic rush to the finish line, with neither proving particularly satisfying.

The tone also fleets from absurd self-seriousness to cartoonish ridiculousness on a whim, and audiences likely won't know when they're supposed to laugh and when they've supposed to be actually invested in what's taking place.

Again these are weird mistakes for Lee to be making, but at least in the pacing stakes, he was responsible for 2003's exhaustingly overlong Hulk, so there is a precedent.