The Island Review
by Rick Ferguson (filmgeek65 AT hotmail DOT com)August 17th, 2005
How fitting, then, that Michael Bay's most artistically successful film- and remember that we're grading on a curve here- is also his biggest bomb. The man who tortured us in his personal cinematic dungeon with such diabolical instruments as ARMAGEDDON, BAD BOYS II and PEARL HARBOR finally gets his comeuppance. No one could be happier than me. I've prayed for this moment for years, but my victory is a Pyrrhic one. I actually kind of liked this film, in the way you kind of like a really ugly dog who keeps breathing his stink-breath on you because he's so happy to see you. I felt sorry for THE ISLAND. It's no classic, but neither is it PEARL HARBOR. At the very least, it deserves a pat on the head.
The setup: Ewan McGregor stars as Lincoln Six Echo, the quietly curious survivor of an ecological catastrophe that has seen the few remaining humans holed up in a hermetically sealed environment in which their every waking moment is strictly regimented by a Big Brother-like security administration. Everyone wears identical white jumpsuits and gym shoes; Lincoln wonders why he can't sometimes wear a suit with a different color stripe. The cafeteria will only serve Lincoln tasteless tofu and wheat germ; he wonders why he can't sometimes have bacon for breakfast. He is assigned a mindlessly repetitive job in a laboratory; Lincoln wonders What It All Means.
His only solace, as indeed it is the overriding hope of all the facility's inhabitants, is that he might someday win the nightly lottery and go the Island, the last contamination-free zone on the planet, where he can bask in real sunlight and frolic in the surf. Still, Lincoln's natural inquisitiveness sets him apart from his fellow survivors. He hangs out in the boiler room with a grizzly engineer named McCord (Steve Buscemi), who introduces him to such strictly verboten delights as alcohol. And he'd sure like to violate the Proximity rules and get to know Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson), a blond bombshell of a survivor who fills out her tracksuit quite nicely.
Then one day, Lincoln catches a moth, and realizes that it must have come from the outside, where everything other than the Island is supposedly dead. Letting the moth go, Lincoln follows it outside the facility, where he learns- well, I won't spoil it for you, even though the trailer gives away every surprise there is to learn. Suffice it to say that Lincoln and Jordan very quickly find themselves in another movie: one with helicopter pursuits, high-octane explosions, blisteringly paced highway calamities and ubiquitous product placements. And oh yes, they loose the white tracksuits.
Like most of Michael Bay's films, The Island is a pastiche of ideas from other movies. The script borrows liberally from the 1976 sci-fi classic LOGAN'S RUN, throws in a pinch or two from the 1978 Michael Douglas vehicle COMA, and also supposedly steals so shamelessly from an obscure 1979 stinker called THE CLONUS HORROR that the makers of that erstwhile classic are suing Dreamworks for copyright infringement.
What these disparate elements combine to give us is an arranged marriage between austere science fiction and 1990's style action spectacle that very nearly, almost, kinda sorta works. I don't say this lightly. With every Michael Bay film, I go in with spoiling for a fight. Hate is a strong word- let's just say that Bay and I have competing aesthetics. Where I like character development, he likes explosions. Where I like dialogue, he likes catch phrases. Where I like mise en scène, he likes montage. Hey man, c'est la vie. In some alternate universe, Michael Bay is a respected auteur with a mantel full of Oscars, and I'm still a would-be critic.
While THE ISLAND will win no awards in this universe, the film does have something akin to a brain, which is new element in the Bay bag of tricks. The first hour exhibits an artistic restraint that Bay has never shown before. For the first time in his filmmaking career, he actually allows the story to simply unfold- no blizzard of two-second cuts, no preening slow-motion shots, no Aerosmith songs. The most obvious difference between a shameless hack and a real filmmaker is that the latter trusts the intelligence of his audience, while the former treats them like a roomful of preschoolers. Bay hasn't completely given up the handholding, but at least he lets us go to the bathroom by ourselves. That's progress, folks.
Unfortunately, Bay can't sustain his newfound Kubrickian restraint. Once Lincoln and Jordan flee their prison, the old Michael Bay bursts forth like the Tasmanian Devil from his shipping crate and lays waste to the second half of the picture with a whirlwind of chases, fireballs, gunfire and quips. Even here, however, the action is a little more considered, a little less frenetic; a freeway pursuit involving a flatbed truck loaded with giant truck axles is crisp enough that the Wachowski brothers could have directed it. The climax, unfortunately, is a messy orgasm of hoary clichés, ham-handed reversals and pseudo-profundities. Baby steps.
And the actors? Well, they're beside the point, aren't they? That two actors with such impeccable credentials as McGregor and Johansson opted to cash out at the Michael Bay ATM is cause for alarm, perhaps. But again, there is a germ of an idea in this picture, and it does have something to say about the nature of humanity that wouldn't be out of place in the current stem-cell debate. So maybe the script grabbed them. Johansson doesn't do anything in this picture that Paris Hilton couldn't have handled, but McGregor gets to stretch a bit- he even gets to act with himself. By the end, however, whatever subtle nuances they bring are lost in the cleansing fires of Bay's Weltanschauung.
As I write this, THE ISLAND has joined a string of perceived 2005 tent pole failures such as KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, CINDERELLA MAN, XXX: STATE OF THE UNION and STEALTH, all of which twitched reflexively, like fresh roadkill, before finally giving up the ghost. These successive bombs have resulted in much navel-gazing and second-guessing in Hollywood as theater attendance figures continue to plummet. Are video games keeping the kids away? Is it the lack of stars? The short DVD window combined with the rise of home theater? Is it the declining movie-going experience, with the high cost of tickets, lousy customer service, eye-gouging concession stand prices, 20 minutes of commercials, yammering cell-phone heads and churlish teenagers? Answer: all of the above. Hear me now, Hollywood: give us a reason to go to the theater, and we'll go. Right now, you're doing everything you can to drive us away.
As for Michael Bay, don't weep for him. He'll make more movies, and will no doubt have more hits. But his aura of invincibility is gone. If he can no longer reel 'em in with mindless eye candy, then he's going to have to turn to the help of the audience he dreads the most: the critics. Better be nice to us, Michael.
***
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