Two Will Smiths don’t double the pleasure in the ill-conceived film ‘Gemini Man’

‘Gemini Man’

› Rating: PG-13 for violence and action throughout, and brief strong language

› Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes

Few movie stars have been so willing to suffer for our ostensible entertainment as Will Smith. I don’t mean that entirely as a compliment, but I also say it with some real, if qualified, admiration.

Smith can suffer beautifully, even movingly, onscreen, as he did playing a destitute dad trying to care for his young son in “The Pursuit of Happyness.” A few years later he seemed to succumb to a bizarre martyr/messiah complex, shouldering the weight of the world in movies that were sometimes fine (“I Am Legend”), sometimes terrible (“Seven Pounds”), but rarely uninteresting.

It was an unexpected tonic to see him play a big blue genie in this year’s “Aladdin” remake, and it’s almost a relief to know he has a “Bad Boys” sequel on the horizon.

Which brings us, in a roundabout fashion, to “Gemini Man,” a silly, soggy, not-unwatchable misfire that arrives in theaters after languishing for nearly 20 years in development. Directed by an off-his-game Ang Lee from a screenplay credited to David Benioff, Billy Ray and Darren Lemke, the movie stars Smith as Henry Brogan, a government marksman who’s far better at killing people than he is at forming sustainable relationships with them.

Years of self-hatred and disillusionment have taken their toll on Brogan, though Smith, 51, with his sad eyes, graying temples and natural charisma, is awfully good at short-circuiting guilt. Faced with a character we might have reason to fear and mistrust, we instead find ourselves wondering why a nice guy his age doesn’t have a wife and kids.

Brogan is introduced shortly before he pulls off his 72nd kill, taking out a dangerous target on a literal bullet train from more than a mile away. It’s a sloppier hit than usual, and Brogan decides it’s time to hang up his sniper rifle before doubt and old age get the better of him.

Unfortunately, some powerful, shadowy types have decided to make his retirement a permanent one. Upon learning that his latest victim may not have been the terrorist he was led to believe, Brogan is betrayed, ambushed and on the run, dashing off to Cartagena and Budapest with allies in tow and enemies on his tail.

The allies — a goofy pilot (Benedict Wong) and an up-and-coming intelligence agent (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) — are fun to spend time with, in part because they seem to have been shipped in from a fresher, funnier movie. The enemies are a relative drag; Clive Owen and Linda Emond seem locked in a competition to see who can smile the least. But they’re all distractions from the movie’s main attraction, which involves a paramilitary organization called Gemini that’s building an army of assassins through cloning.

Brogan learns that he is being hunted by a doppelganger, a younger version of himself manufactured from his own DNA. He is played by Smith with the help of some de-aging digital trickery, the effect of which at times suggests an unusually funereal episode of “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Brogan was an obvious, if unwitting, candidate for replication, and his clone, nicknamed Junior, has inherited his excellent marksmanship. But he has also inherited the older man’s emotional void, his profound alienation, his inability to see other people as anything but moving targets.

That’s the gimmick of “Gemini Man,” and its chief selling point: You get two suffering Smiths for the price of one.

In time, Brogan and Junior will have to lower their weapons and figure out what’s going on, connecting in ways that are meant to be therapeutic for them and cathartic for the audience.

But no catharsis is forthcoming, thanks to a shopworn script and a visual gimmick that feels more distracting than necessary. There are charitable explanations for the uncanny-valley effect of Smith 2.0; maybe your younger clone should look a little off, a little CGI. But it remains an empty, off-putting stunt and not a particularly moving one.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES Will Smith, portraying Junior, foreground, and Henry Brogan in the Ang Lee film “Gemini Man.”