The Island
THE ISLAND Review
- A while back I predicted that this movie would fall into the same category of I, Robot - potentially great due to a strong premise but critically flawed due to key elements of production taking a very, very wrong turn. What went wrong with I, Robot is a little more complicated than with The Island. There you had a bad casting choice with Will Smith as Will Smith in the lead role, and an excellent concept that was slightly dumbed down and turned from hardcore Isaac Asimov scifi into generic Hollywood action movie 101. With the Island, it's clear what the problem is. See, the movie has a great cast. You can't ask for better leads than Ewan McGregor, Scarlet Johanson, Sean Bean, and Steve Buscemi. The premise itself is intriguing, if not entirely novel. So here is the problem: this is Michael Bay gone wild. To borrow a metaphor, it's like taking a candy from a box of chocolates. On the outside you see this dark, creamy, enticing chocolate. But then you bite in and find some nasty purple crap. That's what this movie is - a lot of potential turned into mostly a lot of crap thanks to a bad, uneven script and a director who has no idea how to pace a movie. The plot of this movie, not to mention the characters, get totally lost amidst this movie's rapidly cut, nonsensical action sequences. Now normally a movie's action sequence are what keep you on the edge of your seat - in many ways the highlights of the movie. I think of Spielberg's amazingly choreographed set pieces from War of The Worlds, or Sam Raimi's energetic, kinetic fight scenes from the Spiderman movies, for example. But the Island's second half is basically one long chase scene that despite being non-stop action, had me literally yawning and looking at my watch. It was like "wait, how did they get on top of that building?" Or "okay, this is STILL going on?" The killer has to be theclimactic ending sequence, where the clones played by Ewan and Scarlett break back into the facility they've been running from this whole time to ...? Um .. set all of their fellow clones free? By ... doing what exactly? What all that running and chasing means is that the final confrontation between clone and creator - what should have been a big, epic, dramatic duel - is reduced to a disappointingly brief, anticlimactic cheesefest of a battle where Sean Bean's character actually says "I created you, and I can DESTROY you!" Some good dialogue there ...Every cool scene in this movie seems to be countered by an equally bad one. Ewan and Scarlett playing a real-time version of an X-Box fighting game - they are being trained to fight because .... why? Ewan meeting his the man he is cloned from, and then convincing his persuers that the original is in fact the clone is right out of some Saturday morning cartoon or something. Ugh. Basically this whole movie is a really bad kids cartoon under the pretense of being a serious, adult scifi movie. But it is rarely even cool in a fun, B-movie way. While it is not quite as bad as Bay's worst (in my opinion, the godawful Armageddon), it never reaches the adrenaline-pumping heights of his best (clearly, the pretty kickass The Rock). Overall, there is some fun to be had with this movie. It looks great, has an awesome cast, a sweet soundtrack, and a very interesting premise (even if it will remind you of about 50 other movies - Blade Runner, Dark City, Logan's Run, and that movie Clonus from the '70's which I haven't seen but it apparently directly rips off). It has enough fun moments and keeps you entertained enough to avoid it being a total waste of a few hors in the theater. But ultimately, this is a movie that, thanks to the usual annoying schtick from Michael Bay, came nowhere close to it's potential, and rightly deserved to get lost in the box office amidst a summer of far superior blockbusters.
My grade: C -
- A while back I predicted that this movie would fall into the same category of I, Robot - potentially great due to a strong premise but critically flawed due to key elements of production taking a very, very wrong turn. What went wrong with I, Robot is a little more complicated than with The Island. There you had a bad casting choice with Will Smith as Will Smith in the lead role, and an excellent concept that was slightly dumbed down and turned from hardcore Isaac Asimov scifi into generic Hollywood action movie 101. With the Island, it's clear what the problem is. See, the movie has a great cast. You can't ask for better leads than Ewan McGregor, Scarlet Johanson, Sean Bean, and Steve Buscemi. The premise itself is intriguing, if not entirely novel. So here is the problem: this is Michael Bay gone wild. To borrow a metaphor, it's like taking a candy from a box of chocolates. On the outside you see this dark, creamy, enticing chocolate. But then you bite in and find some nasty purple crap. That's what this movie is - a lot of potential turned into mostly a lot of crap thanks to a bad, uneven script and a director who has no idea how to pace a movie. The plot of this movie, not to mention the characters, get totally lost amidst this movie's rapidly cut, nonsensical action sequences. Now normally a movie's action sequence are what keep you on the edge of your seat - in many ways the highlights of the movie. I think of Spielberg's amazingly choreographed set pieces from War of The Worlds, or Sam Raimi's energetic, kinetic fight scenes from the Spiderman movies, for example. But the Island's second half is basically one long chase scene that despite being non-stop action, had me literally yawning and looking at my watch. It was like "wait, how did they get on top of that building?" Or "okay, this is STILL going on?" The killer has to be theclimactic ending sequence, where the clones played by Ewan and Scarlett break back into the facility they've been running from this whole time to ...? Um .. set all of their fellow clones free? By ... doing what exactly? What all that running and chasing means is that the final confrontation between clone and creator - what should have been a big, epic, dramatic duel - is reduced to a disappointingly brief, anticlimactic cheesefest of a battle where Sean Bean's character actually says "I created you, and I can DESTROY you!" Some good dialogue there ...Every cool scene in this movie seems to be countered by an equally bad one. Ewan and Scarlett playing a real-time version of an X-Box fighting game - they are being trained to fight because .... why? Ewan meeting his the man he is cloned from, and then convincing his persuers that the original is in fact the clone is right out of some Saturday morning cartoon or something. Ugh. Basically this whole movie is a really bad kids cartoon under the pretense of being a serious, adult scifi movie. But it is rarely even cool in a fun, B-movie way. While it is not quite as bad as Bay's worst (in my opinion, the godawful Armageddon), it never reaches the adrenaline-pumping heights of his best (clearly, the pretty kickass The Rock). Overall, there is some fun to be had with this movie. It looks great, has an awesome cast, a sweet soundtrack, and a very interesting premise (even if it will remind you of about 50 other movies - Blade Runner, Dark City, Logan's Run, and that movie Clonus from the '70's which I haven't seen but it apparently directly rips off). It has enough fun moments and keeps you entertained enough to avoid it being a total waste of a few hors in the theater. But ultimately, this is a movie that, thanks to the usual annoying schtick from Michael Bay, came nowhere close to it's potential, and rightly deserved to get lost in the box office amidst a summer of far superior blockbusters.
My grade: C -
posted by Danny B at 9:25 PM
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