From the Vault: The Island

The Island
2005
Michael Bay dir
Jerry Bruckheimer prod

This review contains “spoilers” but nothing that cannot be intuited from viewing the trailer for the film.
So here comes another mid-summer action flick, bombarding the airwaves with advertising but disappearing into the ether almost as fast as it arrived. So what went wrong?

• Jerry Bruckheimer? Check
• Michael Bay? Check
• Hottie? Check (and a bonus check for the skin-tight uniform)
• Explosions? Hell yeah
• Intriguing sci-fi premise vaguely reminiscent of Logan’s Run? Check (but a Minus for giving away the big reveal in the TRAILER)
• Sean Bean as bad guy? Check
• Buscemi!!!!! Check
• Hover bikes? Check
• The only decent part of the recent Star Wars trilogy? Check
  

So what the hell went wrong? This thing is right in my wheelhouse, as they say, and I loved it despite its numerous flaws – but I don’t expect anyone else to like it much at all. However, it should have been a big hit. Ewan McGregor is hot; Scarlett Johansson is hot; Steve Buscemi is…..funny. Say what you want about Bay, but he blows stuff up real nice. He’s a tactician, a visual genius, great at shooting memorable action scenes, and apparently incapable of telling a story with a modicum of subtlety. Actually, that isn’t true, there are some great moments in The Rock and Armageddon – I think he is just out of his league with the hard sci-fi plot.
The Island could have had really great sociological elements. I was hoping for more insight into the lifestyle, social structure and feelings of these people living in this antiseptic, rigid, authoritarian person factory. In the beginning of the film we meet Lincoln Six Echo, who lives in an enormous facility housing all the remaining people on earth. Earth, you see, is contaminated beyond repair by an unexplained occurrence and these lucky few survived and were brought here to live a boring, regimented, utilitarian existence until they hit the Lottery. Once they call your name for the Lottery, you get shipped off to The Island, where the air is clear, birds chirp and presumably you get to start picking out your own clothes.
Lincoln starts his day dressing in identical clothes, eating what the chip in his hand says he’s supposed to eat and…well that’s really sort of the problem with this portion of the movie. You have no idea what they actually Do. I understand there is a lot of waiting going on, and we do eventually see them at work and relaxing but there’s just not enough information for my taste. Soon we learn that Lincoln is unusual, in that he asks questions about his environment. The people running the place seem to be benevolent, but for some reason sinister. To jump ahead, Lincoln’s got a friend, Jordan Two Delta, who wins the Lottery. However, Lincoln has discovered that The Lottery isn’t so much something you want to win and they flee the facility. They quickly learn that, despite all they’ve been told, the rest of the world is alive and well and they were clones created for the express purpose of being an insurance policy for rich people who might want some of their organs some day. Naturally, Lincoln and Jordan are being chased, so they have to figure out a way to get out of their mess. Steve Buscemi helps them, things explode and an exciting conclusion is reached. The end.

• It all sounds like a jolly grand ole time, but I have nits to pick (in no particular order):
• Are we seriously supposed to believe that a facility as large as a small city was created hundreds or thousands of feet below ground?
• If you deliberately set a facility out in the middle of the desert why would you not have some kind of perimeter security, where anyone who happens to reach the top can just wander on out?
• Why would you waste miles of extra space in this underground facility just to setup video screens that appear to be of open spaces? You are CLONING people, I’m willing to assume your video technology is advanced enough you could have just put it in the windows.
• You paid millions for these clones, why aren’t they tagged with some kind of GPS implant?
• I like lists
• There is obviously some kind of tacit government or military approval of this sort of thing, why not just employ normal law enforcement instead of sending out a team of explosion happy mercenaries?
• Scarlett Johansson – why not more cleavage?
• We’re supposed to believe these clones are dumb enough they suspect nothing despite the glaring inconsistencies in what they’re being told, yet Lincoln and Jordan are smart enough to outwit them all.
• I don’t buy that Anyone would give Sean Bean millions of dollars and not suspect he was hiding something/blaspheming God/planning to blow up London with a big laser satellite/trying to steal the Declaration of Independence/planning to take The Precious back to his daddy.
• Who in the hell is responsible for making Hover Bikes look lame, yet Chrysler’s cool?
• Mercenary with a heart of gold is so last century.
  

You know what I’m not upset about? The absurd product placement. I’ve seen complaints about this but it doesn’t really bother me for the following reasons:

• Movies cost money and if some of that money can be recouped by advertisers and poured back into the filmmaking then you’ve basically got free money to film with. I’d cover my actors in ads NASCAR style if someone gave me filmmaking money.
• Your precious real world is full of ads, and I’m almost willing to bet the reason you notice ads in film and television is not because there are More, but Less – their lack of ubiquity is jarring so that when you do see one you notice it. I read someplace (i.e. just made up this statistic) that the average American is exposed to three thousand advertisements a day.
• I find it funny when actors and screenwriters are forced to work in awkward nods to consumer products amidst car chases and lovemaking sessions.
• Likewise, I am impressed when a particularly well-done product placement is used so that it’s either integral to the plot or so well-suited you barely notice.
• Finally, I like to see people get all worked up about silly things
  

So, to sum up – I was very disappointed in The Island, but one cannot judge a movie based on what You wanted it to be, but what it is. Unfortunately, it’s a glossy, adrenaline filled ride topped with just enough pseudo social commentary and dystopic fear of the future/corporations/Sean Bean to make you wish it was about something more. And seriously, the hanging-off-the-side-of-the-building sequence was killer and the driving-on-a-truck one was pretty damn good too. In addition, the script had some very good dry humour and both actors did well, although they had virtually zero chemistry. I’d like to think this was on purpose as a nod to their undeveloped clone psyches and authoritarian upbringing, but I think Michael Bay doesn’t find women as sexy as he does hover bikes, so he spends more time on those.