The Island Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)July 12th, 2005
The Island
reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
rating: 3.0 out of 4
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi
Screenwriter: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Caspian Tredwell-Owen MPAA Classification: PG-13 (intense sequences of violence and action, some sexuality and language)
If we've learned anything from Michael Bay films, it's that the man knows how to shoot a car chase. Problem is, on all his dramatic outings (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon), where action, sex, and violence take a back seat to emotion, he has failed to prove his versatility. His last film, Bad Boys II, was an expectedly underrated flop. I'm not saying I loved the film but, for what it was, Bad Boys II worked. And now comes The Island; an ambitious sci-fi popcorn flick that challenges your brain as much as it does your senses. Starring two of the most talented and interesting faces in Hollywood, The Island thankfully goes beyond what we've come to expect from typical Michael Bay. Make no mistake, The Island reeks of Bay's frenetic style, but it's intelligent enough to force the violence to take a co-pilot's position along with plot. A fair compromise if you ask me.
It opens in what is seemingly the last refuge of mankind. Dressed from head to toe in sterilized white jump suits and analyzed at every turn, Lincoln 6 Echo (Ewan McGregor) is one of the few thousand survivors that was rescued from what is called "the contamination." Heading up this group is Merrick (Sean Bean), who played the same role in the recent indie sci-fi romp Equilibrium. Merrick promises the inhabitants (or products as he calls them) of his facility that the one remaining naturally un-contaminated area of Earth is "the island." Praised as a Garden of Eden, products are put in a lottery every night to be chosen who gets to leave the facility for paradise. Other than this small hope, the products have little else to live for. They shuffle around their work areas, injecting vitamins into tubes and eating controlled nutritional meals. No intimate contact is allowed, but social activity is encouraged. One friend of Lincoln 6 Echo's is Jordan 2 Delta (Scarlett Johansson), whom he fights in virtual kick-boxing tournaments at the dance club (why is there a dance club?). Lincoln 6 Echo seems to contain one element the rest of the products don't: curiosity. He wonders why he lives the life that he does. He sometimes sneaks into another sector of the facility to visit his janitor friend McCord (Steve Buscemi), who seems much closer to a normal human than the rest of the products. One day, while sneaking about this sector, Lincoln stumbles upon an insect. Common knowledge says that all forms of life were eliminated during the contamination. So how is the insect explained? Following the path of this bug, Lincoln soon finds that the so-called island is not what he expected.
It all sounds vague, I know, but I can't say much more without spoiling one of the many excellent surprises The Island has in store for you. It all echoes of such earlier films as The Matrix, I, Robot, Minority Report, Equilibrium, Gattaca, etc. But The Island is still original enough to hook you with its slow, intriguing introduction and push you headfirst through the rest of its blisteringly kinetic ride.
Michael Bay's style is commonly known as the "MTV filmmaking syndrome," where directors resort to disorienting quick cuts that don't allow us to actually see the action, but only glimpse it. Oftentimes this MTV directing loses us with all the disorientation and then ends up finally boring us. But Michael Bay has thankfully honed this directing style down to something of a science. Bad Boys II's average length of cuts was somewhere between one and two seconds, meaning every second Michael Bay switched to a completely different angle. This is simply annoying. In Bad Boys II Michael Bay mistakingly teased his audience. Anyway, he works this style much better with The Island. You see, much of the film consists of McGregor and Johansson running. They run in the facility, they run in Arizona, they run in train stations, they run in New York City, and pretty much run on every single set in the film. Bay makes all this running interesting by some flashy visual tricks that are just enough to keep us interested in all the footwork. Also, Bay almost works as another character in the film, particularly in his trademark territory: the car chase. Essentially, The Island, like Enemy of the State, is 2 hour long chase scene, so Bay's in his comfort zone the entire way, but there are two chase scenes in particular that are truly works of art. My favorite of these involves a vehicle called the Black Wasp. Shaped like a water-ski from Satan, the Black Wasp works essentially like a souped-up motorcycle that can fly. Place this vehicle in the streets of a beautifully imagined futuristic New York City with attack helicopters and assassins. Need I say more?
But where The Island falls is where Bay's style actually gets in the way. Minority Report seemed sweeping and eloquent, but The Island sometimes feels tacky and immature. Like last year's I, Robot, scatological humor and bold one-liners substitute for character development. Also, Bay sometimes has too much fun with the camera and decides to shoot every angle with as much dramatic emphasis as possible. Every nemesis is seen from an ants-eye view and we constantly see the heroes from the bird's-eye. Even worse, there are some unexplainable loopholes in the plotting that cause some serious leaps in logic. But that's just the name of the game with a Michael Bay film.
However, the superb performances by Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor make up for these irritations. In my opinion, the two are some of the very best A-list actors in Hollywood. But essentially, it all has the feel of a Summer blockbuster. This, I know, is the very point of The Island. But one of these days, I hope a director (other than George Lucas) takes the science fiction genre to a higher level.
-Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
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