Excellent but underrated film

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It was a very boring show; slick, good looking and sharp. The general gist of it was that a man touched his Omega watch and turned invisible. It was put on as retaliation to The Invisible Man which was a much more sophisticated and elegant animal.There was an obligatory husky voice over and pin sharp editing but it pushed disbelief just one step too far. The soundtrack was horns and stabbing but the clarion didn't really come off for anything other than switch over and put something else on.

Lots of wire-flown objects, POV shots and reasonably well-executed lap dissolves kept up the illusion of Sam Casey turning himself invisible for fifteen minutes with a just push of a button in his wristwatch/DNA stabilizer to allow him to elude the villains of the week, be they common criminals, enterprising mad scientists or the evil Reds behind the Iron Curtain. Despite the few science-fiction trappings and the really rather contrived, but narratively necessary, 15-minute limitation on Casey's powers, this was still essentially yet another low-budget, no-frills 1970s American action series for the younger audience. The situations are rudimentary, the characters and morals clear-cut and stereotypical, but the logic lapses are not too rife and there is a kind of harmless innocence about the whole exercise, something that the likes of MacGyver could capture better a decade later but which seems quite outdated in the more cynical and morally-ambiguous times of television programming.Ben Murphy in the title role was suitably easy-going, but perhaps a bit too much of a pretty boy without a strong enough charisma, though well-supported by the rest of the cast. Tellingly, the most memorable episode was the humorous "Sam Casey, Sam Casey", the prerequisite lookalike-impersonating-as-the-hero thing (well, the show was called "Gemini Man", after all), which gave Murphy some room to stretch out, with an amusing Cockney caricature for his scenes as Casey's gum-chewing, shuriken-throwing evil double.In retrospect this was a bit of throwaway fun, but no more than many other running-and-jumping series of the time, including Bennett's previous hit The Six Million Dollar Man. Understandably it died very fast and is largely forgotten today.

He is permanently invisible, due to radiation exposure.The watch makes him visible ... some kind of 'DNA stabilizer', according to the show.He becomes invisible again by turning the watch off.If he remains too long invisible, then he dies.Just thought I'd clarify the sci-fi element of the show.This was one of many quickly cancelled 70s series, along with the likes of Logan's Run, Man from Atlantis & Fantastic Journey that still manages to cling on in the minds of many ... how long before these shows get a remake, I wonder? Especially given the current climate or remake, re-hash & recycle, in film & television.

Despite being on MST3K, Gemini Man has a few good things going for it. Namely, a fairly good acting talents (one has to wonder if it's the writing that's awkward or the actors, I choose the latter) and a quite original idea: invisibility for only a short time before all bets are off and SOMETHING will happen. One gets the feeling that this SOMETHING would have made an interesting cliffhanging season finale if this series had continued.But nevertheless, the show was more a fistfight than an academic bout. Despite it's background, don't mistake the show for cerebral ground: the producers chose Ben Murphy for fighting alone. The rest of the cast, through competant, really don't stand out.Bottom Line: Watch "Gemini Man" if you want something along the lines of "Knight Rider," but without the bad flashbacks to a certain actor's "Baywatch" career. It's just harmless fun, either if you're getting into it or just laughing and remembering "Riding With Death."Not that bad of a series.