First Hit: Entertaining story, but it was the special effects of a young Henry Brogan (a young Will Smith) that was the star.
Ang Lee spent time and money using CGI to make Henry (Will Smith) have a Junior, and it worked.
Brogan is the most perfect and lethal sniper the US Government has ever had. To prove the point, we see him in the first scenes preparing to kill a man moving on a train traveling at 248 kilometers per hour (154 mph) while lying on a hillside some 200 meters (~650 ft) away from the tracks. He nails it.
But Brogan is done with killing after he’s shot more than seventy people. He’s tired, 51-years-old and all the deaths are eating away at him. At one point, he says, “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.”
However, the powers that be, including CIA director Janet Lassiter (Linda Emond), want Brogan dead, and the funny thing is that the reason for this is poorly explained and developed in this story. This was the weakest part of the plot, but if you buy their explanation, it works well enough to enjoy the rest of the film.
Arriving back home after the initial assassination scene, ready to enter retirement, he heads to the harbor where he has a boat. Going to pay for gas, he finds a new person named Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in the dock shed. She gives him a story that the previous guy retired and that she’s studying marine biology at the nearby University of Georgia.
Taking his boat to meet with a secret contact, he finds a directional bug under the dashboard. Arriving back at the dock, he storms into the shed where Danny is seated and accuses her of being an agent operative for the government. She denies and denies his allegations. Apologizing he asks her out to eat as a way to make up for his rudeness and accusations. When he meets her for dinner, she shows her his research proving she’s an agent.
This scene gives the audience supporting information that Brogan is smart and knows what he’s doing, not only with a rifle, but he’s made it this far because he’s smart. Secondly, being found out implicates Danny in a larger scheme, and now she must support Brogan because she becomes an assassination target as well.
He awakes when assassins come to his home. He takes care of them as only an assassin would and rushes to Danny’s house to tell her she’s surly a target for assassination now and to go with him.
This is the setup. Lassiter is under threat by Clay Verris (Clive Owen), who owns a gun for hire company called Gemini. Verris is holding information that will ruin Lassiter’s career. If Lassiter cannot finish the job by getting rid of Brogan, his team will. Her ego won’t let him take over yet. She wants to prove she can finish the job.
After multiple failures by Lassiter’s team, Verris uses his squad of assassins, including a 23-year-old-clone version of Brogan, to kill Brogan, Zakarweski, and Brogan’s close pilot friend Baron (Benedict Wong).
The rest of the film is about the battle between the clone and Brogan, along with understanding why a clone of Brogan was created.
The action was excellent, although at times it seemed as if the fight scenes were too long. The realism of the younger clone put together by the CGI team was terrific. I loved having Danny as part of the plot because her rationality and the way she added to the story grounded the film.
Smith was strong as Brogan, the supreme assassin and weapon of the United States. He outwardly carried enough of the internal pain of his upbringing to make his character seem real and whole. Winstead was excellent as the agent sent to track Brogan and ends up partnering with him as he gets to the root of the issue at hand. Owen is outstanding and always makes a great evil foil. His voice and attitude are perfect as the antagonist. Emond was good as the CIA director trying to clean up the mess she’s created by losing so many men to Brogan’s skills. Wong was the perfect long-time associate to Brogan. They had great chemistry together. David Benioff and Billy Ray wrote an entertaining screenplay. Lee knows how to create action, and he does here as well. I think they might have gotten more impact by shortened the fighting scenes as they felt long. He didn’t settle for less with the CGI of the Will Smith (Brogan) clone. It was amazingly done it seemed like Brogan was fighting a real person.
Overall: Entertaining enough and at the end with Brogan is telling his clone about his prowess it felt typical good time Will Smith.