Movie Review

The Island

I dreaded seeing this movie from the moment I knew that this is a Michael Bay film. Widely regarded as one of the worst directors Hollywood has to offer, Bay represents modern movies' lack of substance and contempt for the audience (he may never make a "good" movie in his entire career, which is maddening news for fans of the forthcoming "Transformers," like me). The Island is kind of like Bay's audition for the Robots-In-Disguise, meaning it's a sci-fi film with big action and chase scenes. It's an improved work from Bay, but it still has that ringing thud of crass commercialism, and it also goes on for too long.

The movie starts with Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan Macgregor) waking up in clean white sheets in his sanitized white room. He is clearly part of a futuristic society that monitors everything, even up to the sodium content in Ewan?s urine. We then see that Lincoln is part of a community that all wears matching white jumpsuits. They follow the bizarre orders of the men in black suits, who want only to keep them docile and undisturbed. The white-suited residents don?t know why they are in this environment but they do know that every so often there is a lottery whose winner gets to go off to the paradisiacal Island.

But Six-Echo has a curiosity about what the Island really is, and questions the nature of his world. Soon, he discovers what's really going on, and it's a scary deal: The Island actually means certain death for his comrades. When his friend Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johannson) wins the lottery, Lincoln grabs her and escapes all the way from bed quarters to the outside of the mammoth scientific facility, which turns out to be in the middle of the desert. The duo then goes on the run from a private security contractor (Djimon Hounsou) and his team. They end up in 2015 Los Angeles and wreak havoc on downtown with a lot of chasing and shooting. The full story is eventually revealed, explaining who Lincoln, Jordan, and all their peers are.

This movie comes off as somewhat schizophrenic: The first part is a rip-off of Logan's Run and THX 1138, and the second part is a rip off of Bad Boys II. Bay sampling from his own previous film? That would be about par for his creativity level. Actually, The Island presents some good ideas about the search for immortality and the callousness of the rich folks who are striving for it. But these ideas are hardly original and they mostly come off as a philosophical mix-tape which is standard airplay in this genre (or at least it used to be).

But the true agenda of the film is shown when all ideas are dropped and the movie shifts into high action gear when Lincoln and Jordan become action heroes despite their lack of combat training. These sections simply feel like the storytellers are admitting that they have no material beyond a moderately intriguing starting point. Car chases are always filler, even if they do involve sleek black hoverbikes. And while the destruction bits possess some headlong energy, they still suffer from bad cutting and the lack of fluidity; Michael Bay is one of the prime perpetrators of this new style of hack action cinema.

The reason this movie is a little better than Bay's usual fare is because of its mildly heightened sensibility; there's a little more on this film's mind than Armageddon or Bad Boys. Even though the elevated material is thin, I appreciate the fact that it's in there (the slightest trace of humanity is always welcome at the movies, even if it runs contrary to the industry?s attitudes). The whole package, however, leaves one quite cold and certainly doesn't stand up to any kind of logical inspection. These days, movies are so preposterous that they totally take you out of the experience (that and the laughable product placements). The Island is nothing I'd want to go through again, but in this horrendous year at the movies it's not amongst the worst stuff out there.

Scott's Grade: C+

A	15.1%
B	59.2%
C	24.5%
D	1.2%
F	0.0%