The Island
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Actor: Djimon Hounsou, Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean, Steve BuscemiBrand: Paramount
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 136 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-12-13
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Dreamworks Video
DVD Reviews of The Island
DVD Review: Hardly paradisiacal
Summary: 2 Stars
Michael Bay's "The Island" is really two movies cobbled somewhat inexpertly together, either of which could have stood on their own as a serviceable and even entertaining picture but do not marry well at all. Whether or not you like "The Island" will likely depend on how much you can ignore one and focus on the other. On the one hand, the beginning of the film is a promising set-slightly-in-the-future sci-filosophy flick in the style of "Equilibrium" or "A.I." It is not very deep, but it is slick and mod and cool and has a few ideas that could be, with development, thought-provoking and relevant to our own times.
This, understandably, is not the movie Bay spends most of his time on. The other two-thirds of the film consist almost entirely (and unrelentingly) of the typical teenage testosterone-driven car chases and endless mind-numbing explosions that we have come to expect from films like "Armageddon" and "Bad Boys." I have a soft spot for stuff blowing up onscreen, particularly when it is handled well (and Bay's usually is), but after an hour and a half of constant bombardment with it, even the best, most designer mayhem becomes....merely mayhem. So many cars, trucks, planes, buildings, silos - you get the idea - explode, detonate, collapse, or otherwise are destroyed in this film that I found myself replaying the previous action sequences in my head, just to make sure I really hadn't seen that before.
In other words, over 90 minutes of a movie with a running time of 127 minutes (no action film, with the exception perhaps of "Lord of the Rings" or something equally huge, should ever run over two hours) is devoted to what eventually feels like one prolonged car-chase, with frequent explosions tossed in to divert us from...well, whatever remains in our salvo-shocked brains of the plot.
Which is a shame, really, as this part is actually interesting, and even thought-provoking, at least by popcorn-movie standards. In the not-too-distant future, the rich and powerful can purchase "insurance policies" in the form of clones. These clones, since they are produced from their "owners'" DNA, are exact genetic replicas of the "real" persons, and handy therefore should one need skin grafts, organ transplants, etc. They are kept insulated from knowledge of the outside world, which they believe has been destroyed by a "contamination" of almost mythic proportions: everything, that is, except one remarkable "Island," which is spoken of in reverent, dulcet tones as "the world's last remaining paradise." The clones live a blissfully idyllic if discomfitingly sterile life in a "facility" dressed in shades of antiseptic white, black, and peculiar aqua that match their designer track-suits, going about routine jobs and drinking lots and lots of Aquafina. When they're not drinking Miller beer. Or Diet Coke. But I digress. Their only goal is to reach "the Island" someday; they are reassured in what is in retrospective a chillingly truthful manner that they all eventually will, by a ubiquitous talking poster of a cool brunette who is very reminiscent of Big Brother.
Of course, we are assured by the shady project manager Dr. Merrick (played by that remarkable standard for smoothly villainous Brits, Sean Bean) that clones, or "agnates,"are completely safe and entirely non-"human": they are not curious, they do not feel natural human emotions, nor are they aware of sex or much at all beyond a fifth-grade education. His protestations are of course refuted by the presence of Lincoln Six-Echo, a clone who is quite curious and borders frequently on insurgency. He is helped along in his rule-breaking by the Bay-movie staple Steve Buscemi as McCord, that omnipresent sort of seedy chief engineer who knows the ways of the world and keeps dirty pictures of girls on his walls. (There is a moment of humor when Lincoln asks McCord why his "pretty friends" have no clothes, and McCord hints at his underlying - albeit well-concealed - decency by being unable to answer.)
Lincoln's favorite word is why: why can he not have bacon for breakfast? Why does everyone have to wear white? Who made Tuesday tofu night? And what is tofu anyway? Innocent enough questions, perhaps, but they inevitably lead to trouble, particularly after he witnesses some truly shocking incidents in the facility's medical wing. This segment of the film comes closest to actual artistry of anything that Bay has done, particularly in one scene where a mother is taken from the facility to birth her child, and we discover in jarring horror along with Lincoln that things are not as they seem. It also asks (or seems to ask) some deep questions, particularly for summer fare: What exactly makes us human? To what extent is the preservation of the self justified? Is it possible to make "copies" of ourselves without giving away parts of what makes us...ourselves?
And then Bay switches gears to the Escape Picture, where Lincoln Six-Echo and his beautiful "friend" Jordan Two-Delta must run for their lives from the Evildoers who wish to stop them before they can tell the world the company's dirty secrets. And run they do. It is with reluctance that we leave - though it's more like being yanked away from - the antiseptic-shaded, idea-driven plot-world and are thrown headlong into a heady series of chases involving no fewer than eight separate modes of transportation, all shot in smoky reds and hazy glaring oranges and never stopping for breath. These are exhilarating at first, but in no time at all they become repetitive, and otherwise remarkable actors like Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, and Djimon Hounsou are reduced to shouting lines like "Run!" and "Jump!" and "Get them!" every 6.5 seconds. Johansson fares perhaps the worst: at least McGregor gets to indulge in a little high-concept CGI-enhanced play later in the film, while poor Scarlett runs around looking every inch the generic blonde action damsel, right down to her stiletto black leather boots.
Also disturbingly distracting is what appears to be a growing trend in big-budget movies: relentless product placement. As in life, Microsoft is inescapably everywhere (oh, look, the white pages in the future are - MSNsearch!), along with Nokia, Diet Coke, Xbox, Puma, Aquafina (plugged EVERYWHERE), Budweiser, Reebok, Cadillac, and innumerable others, including a very, very familiar ad campaign for Calvin Klein featuring - who else? - Scarlett Johansson. Bay actually plays the whole TV spot for us, via a little screen in a shop window, and has Johansson reacting to it in a scene that would be ironically funny if it weren't so clearly oblivious to its own commercialness. I don't object to having real-world products in films; it can add a useful air of verisimilitude when it's not pummeling you over the head with its presence, and when it makes sense to be there. In 2019, it...doesn't. It makes one ask "why" questions of one's own, like: Why is absolutely everyone 14 years in the future still driving 2005 Caddys that amazingly look brand-new? Why do they have hovercraft and high-tech floating trains, yet still drive cars with *tires*? Why have brand labels remained unchanged for over a decade? And why if they can clone Ewan McGregor can they not develop a better game console than Xbox?
Ultimately Bay comes off looking like he wanted to make a thoughtful sci-fi thriller along the lines of "A.I." or "Minority Report" or even the first "Matrix," films that consider, however cursorily, the implications of what it means to be human (or not) and struggling for survival. Unfortunately Bay hasn't got the style or artistic chutzpah of Spielberg or the Wachowskis; his filming sensibilities are more in keeping with those of a pretentious but attention-deficit fifteen-year-old. He loses patience with his restrained sci-filosophy flick before it has a chance to really get going, instead deciding on his usual method of blowing stuff up, letting the debris settle, and then smashing that too.
Description of The Island
Blockbuster action director Michael Bay delivers a striking look at a strange world of the future in this sci-fi action drama. Midway through the 21st century, Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) lives in a confined indoor community after ongoing abuse of the Earth has rendered most of the planet uninhabitable. One of the only places in the outside world still capable of sustaining life is an idyllic island where citizens are chosen to live through a lottery. Or at least that's what Lincoln and his fellow citizens are taught to believe; the truth is that Lincoln, like everyone he knows, is actually a clone who is kept under wraps to provide needed organs when the person who supplied his or her DNA falls ill. When he becomes aware that his existence is a fraud, Lincoln escapes to the outside world with a fellow clone, Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson), though the powers that be are determined to see that no one gets away alive. The Island also stars Steve Buscemi, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Sean Bean.When you add up all the best things about The Island, you might just conclude that there's hope yet for Hollywood's most critically reviled hit-maker, Michael Bay. Recruited by Steven Spielberg to direct this lavish and often breathtaking sci-fi action thriller, Bay rises to the occasion with an ambitious production that is, by his standards (and compared to Bay's earlier hits like The Rock and Armageddon), surprisingly intelligent as it explores the repercussions of cloning in a sealed-off society where humans are cultivated for spare parts, surrogate parenthood, and full-body replacements for wealthy clientele. But when two of the clones (Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johanssen) begin to question their fate and the motives of their keepers, they escape into the real world and The Island becomes just another Michael Bay action extravaganza, albeit an impressively exciting one. With elaborate chase scenes and a high-tech feast of CGI to dazzle the eye, The Island recycles much of the plot from 1979's Clonus while borrowing elements from Logan's Run, Gattaca and Minority Report, and while it's not as smartly conceived as those earlier films, there's no denying that, in many ways, it's Bay's best film to date. --Jeff Shannon
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