Hustlers and Gemini Man: double feature

For a movie that’s technically about a group of ex-strippers who made a lot of money from drugging guys and charging up their credit cards, Hustlers takes a long time to get around to the drugging and robbing. 

 

That’s because this film isn’t really about that at all; partly it’s about “can people form human connections in a world where every relationship has become commodified?”, and partly it’s about “can you ever have too many shopping scenes and strut montages set to 2010-era bangers?” (the answers are yes and no).

 

Destiny (Constance Wu) is the “new girl” dancer at a New York strip club, while Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) is the experienced elder stateswoman who takes her under her wing. There's money to be made and they're going to make it - preferably while looking good doing it. What comes next follows the Goodfellas template of true-crime stories: good times up front, then eventually you have to pay the price.

 

Only here the good times just keep on coming and the whole “price-paying” thing is covered in a handful of scenes that don’t quite say horny drunk guys deserve to be drugged and robbed, but

do say that if these girls didn’t do it someone else would and these guys pretty much did deserve it anyway. The real twist here is that the crime crew actually seem to like each other: what's at stake isn't their ill-gotten gains, but the friends they made along the way.

 

The whole thing is a good time so long as you don’t think about it too much, and why should you? There’s always more handbags to buy.

 

Occasionally Hollywood serves up a movie that only exists because someone wanted to try out a cool new toy. Usually they bomb, which is possibly why Gemini Man sees Ang Lee trying out two (and a half if you count the 3D) new toys at once: it was filmed at a high frame rate (60 frames per second rather than the usual 24), and it features an all-digital version of a young Will Smith.

 

Surprisingly, both of those elements largely work. The high frame rate (at least when combined with the 3D) gives the action scenes an effective immediacy – especially in an early, lethal game of hide and seek where being able to see with crystal clarity every corner of the frame is really useful. 

 

The digital Smith is also (mostly) plausible and believable, though his actual acting (supplied by older Smith via motion capture) largely hovers around the "tormented and sulking" end of the scale and isn’t anything to get excited about. Unfortunately neither is the actual story, which is an utterly generic and uninspiring spy thriller that would have worked just as well (which is to say, not very well at all) if Smith’s character was being hunted by his son rather than his clone. 

 

But then this movie would have absolutely no reason to exist; as it stands, unless you're really into the technical side of film-making, it just has no reason for you to see it.

 

- Anthony Morris