Pros: dazzling, action-packed fun, with timely issues and great performances
Cons: clones other movies shamelessly
The Bottom Line: Just what the doctor ordered even if it clones every movie Michael Bay ever liked. In a season of misplaced films, this one is right where it ought to be.
The Island is a lot of fun to watch, even if this tale of human cloning for parasitic purposes is, in fact, a tale of directorial cloning for parasitic purposes.
Summer is supposed to be popcorn season, and there's been precious little of that. Sure, it's been a season of light-saber battles and the Smiths trying to blow each other into the Kingdom of Heaven, not to mention Tom Cruise running for his life and the appearance of five superheroes moonlighting through NYC. And I hear there's this rich guy who wants to start his own war of terror - in a bat suit.
But it has also been four months of oddball choices - of soccer moms and monster mom-in-laws, of inmates playing pigskin with the guards, while Russell threw the phone (and hit Cinderella, man). The sisterhood took their pants on vacation (to show off their Happy Endings) while a Sharkboy met the Honeymooners. It turns out Herbie was only half-loaded and the witch couldn't find her wand or the Perfect Man, not even Kicking and Screaming. In the Land of the Dead, the Dark Water had all the Hustle and Flo of The Bad News Bears. Call 'em The Devil's Rejects. Call 'em Wedding Crashers.
I'm just glad we made it to The Island.
I don't care if he had to beg, borrow or steal half the images in this remake of Logan's Run, with chunks of Coma in its stool. I don't care if the chase scenes look like they belonged on Endor, or if that desert country makes me think of the last forty minutes of Capricorn One. If you can forget you're watching a phone commercial on steroids, or forgive the jacking of Freejack - you may just down that popcorn and have a good time. After all, you deserve it. I know I do.
Whatever its genetic origins in other films, this story revolves around a group of dummies, the kind of folks who vote Republican even after learning that Bush falsified the intel to get his war in Iraq, which he linked to Al Quaeda. Okay, okay - who let Michael Moore in here? (If you think Republicans are dumb, what do we call Democrats who took one look at Daddy Bush's victory against Michael Dukakis - then cloned Baby Bush the next best thing: Dukakis's lieutenant govenor?)
These folks live in a gigantic Biosphere II (omigod, the real one, which was fake, too - was in Arizona, too). The powers that be tell them they're oh so lucky to be living where they are, in the only place not contaminated with radioactive fallout, truck exhaust and one of Michael Moore's taco farts.
Did I say, the "only" place? Strike that. There is ONE place equally blessed and clean - and it's not a gym club full of Puritans. It's THE ISLAND - minus Giligan, the Skipper and Leonardo Di Caprio. They could all go there, but what would be the fun in that? Instead, they're stuck waiting for their lucky day to come. Winners of "the lottery" (forget you read that short story) get to go there. That leaves a lot of losers - but this one is pretty much like the one in Florida. No matter how many times somebody else gets to yell "Bingo!" - you always have tomorrow. Just bring your wallet.
But there's always a misfit.
This one is Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor), the kind of guy who reminds me of all those reporters giving poor Scott McClellan such a hard time (poor, poor Scotty). Logan Five, I mean Lincoln Six Echo, has been having a lot of nightmares lately - and damned if he doesn't love his bacon. Maybe that's why there's so much salt in his urine. Just ask his talking toilet.
Lincoln Six Echo also has a "problem" if you will, which is not unlike the problem I had when I turned eleven and parts of me started waking me up - without the benefit of electronics. He's attracted to Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) a Biospheric hottie if ever I saw one. But every time he gets within a Bible's distance of the blonde bombshell, a little man comes out - no, not that little man - a little Puritan connected with the establishment: They're not even in Utah and already the "proximity warnings" are being announced as if this were a church dance.
If only they could get to the island, and roll around the surf, and feed each other coconut milk and get naked. Wait a minute. That's my fantasy. Sorry.
All of Lincoln Six Echo Charlie Bravo Delta Chi Omega Zeta Alpha Nu's homeboys are starting to ask a lot of annoying questions (just like those reporters - poor, poor Scotty). The more they ask, the more trouble they face. Why can't they just drop the goo into the tubes and not ask what's connected on the other end?
Being the persistent bastard that he is, Lincoln SE (talk about product placement) has a buddy, McCord (Steve Buscemi) who isn't "on the outside" but is at least outside the lockup of this particular asylum. When a pregnant Dummy has a crisis, Lincoln SE is sent out for a decontamination kit - and like any kid in middle school, he uses the trip to the office to practically tour the school and get into trouble.
It's while he's out there that Lincoln SE sees what's really going on. People aren't going to the Island. They're just being scavenged for parts - so that rich people can get an extra lung, a kidney, a pint of blood free from Herpes Symplex B. He doesn't know why, just that winning the lottery ain't what it was five minutes before. ("Soylent Green is people!")
But if ... (a) Those who win the lottery get turned into spare parts and ... (b) Jordan Two Delta just won the lottery .... that would mean that .... If they traced the robots here, they may have learned who they sold them to. And that would lead them back home!
The Island is basically a chase movie, involving Lincoln SE's attempts to get himself and Jordan Two Delta the hell outta the slaughterhouse while modern-day bounty hunters chase them with hate in their hearts. It's a cross between The Twilight Zone and Uncle Tom's Cabin - or an article written by PETA - and it has spills, chills and thrills galore. It has its share of plot holes - like how such a place - even under legitimate cover - could pass muster with the USDA, or how they got Miracle Gro to work on clones.
But that's small potatoes. This is a popcorn film, not another attempt to grab an Oscar by copping Seabiscuit and Million Dollar Baby at the same time. (Sorry, Russell - you phone-slinging jerk. By the way, windbag, try hurling an LG at my face sometime. I'll give you more than one reason to hop a plane to Aussieland.)
The Island is an eye-popping, adrenalin-filled roller-coaster rush that, thankfully, didn't steal anything from Paycheck. Only when Michael Bay slows down and kills us with Steve Jablonsky's "original music" does it feel like we're watching Pearl Harbor. Mauro Fiore (Training Day) shoots everything in phone-commercial lush. We know, going in, that we're getting the most derivative script and direction since the last Michael Bay movie - but there's just so much to enjoy here that it really doesn't matter.
Steal away, Mike. Steal away.
The committee of scribes who put the script together give us so much food for thought - about blind obedience to authority and the illusions that keep us going - that we don't care if Michael Bay did snatch images from Ridley Scott's 1984 Apple Macintosh commercial. We're having too much fun watching Michael Bay clone everything.
And for a popcorn film, this one has a lot more energy than The Sixth Day or some other yawner. And here are some great performances, including Michael Clarke Duncan who figures out, only too late, that being lucky ain't all it's cracked up to be. Sean Bean is also a great bastard - the kind of guy who'd start a war on terror just to get himself re-elected. But the politics of this film are in the equal-opportunity-offender zone - as the plight of our heroes might well be the plight of the human fetus or those stem cells the Republicans like to have over for punch and cookies.
There's an interesting scene, when Scarlett Johansson is told, by one of the baddies, that she's going to be carved up and sold as parts. When she says, "You're not touching my body," we can't really tell whether she's channeling Project Rescue's idea of a fetus, or Planned Parenthood's idea of a 15-year-old the day after John Roberts warms a seat down at the U.S. Supreme Court. All I know is, no guy wants to hear a woman say that, especially if she looks like Scarlett Johansson. (Sorry, Tom.)
For a movie I was warned about, The Island is lots of (derivative) fun. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, look for lots of gifts under the Michael Bay Christmas tree. Santa's feeling extra generous this year. Don't ask me if the toys are new. Just know that Uncle Mike has gobs and gobs of batteries.
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