The Island (Movie Review)
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
Michael Bay is not an unknown person to the movie industry; he delivered us great action-movies like The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys I & II. All of them have a few things in common. First one is that the story is not really too deep nor intelligent by design. Either it’s a comet threatening to destroy life on this planet, or it could be the wacky, gun-blazing adventures of 2 crazy cops or a general taking people hostage on Alcatraz. The formula remains the same, keep it light and keep it simple. Secondly, the movies have rotating, swooping, spinning camera-effects. Usually these are presented in slow motion and are a joy to the eye. Thirdly, the action is big. Lots of explosions, cars flying through the air, bullets flying while the camera tries to keep up. Michael Bay knows this, he knows what to do with it, he knows how to always keep freshen things up and seeks new corners for his camera; angles some directors only dream of shooting. With The Island, Bay sails another course.
We are presented with an actual story; sadly enough it is not all that original. A system, to keep people controlled with strict habits, stringent routine and, of course, one rebels, as one always does. Have we not seen this before? I believe I have. Equilibrium, The Matrix (to a certain extend I might add) and THX 1138 are just a few examples that come to my mind. And when you say THX, then you know the story itself is pretty old because that movie was released in the year 1971. So Bay adapts this old story, shapes it and moulds it in his movie called The Island. A smart move? I think not actually, it might have been better if there was some originality found in the story.
So he violates rule #1, to keep it simple. People want to be entertained with these sorts of films, so you don’t present them a visually heavy action sequence that goes on about 5 minutes in a movie where the story is meant to be deep. You do it subtle with a big bang on the end, like in Equilibrium or certain small portions like they did in The Matrix with the lobby scene as their big bang. When you give them action, action, some story, more action, more story…well the audience gets confused, almost scared that they are missing something. Should they be enjoying the action or following the story?
It would’ve been better if Bay would have started with a more action intro, not throw the whole badabing in our faces. Subtle and gentle would have been more suitable for this movie. But what’s done is done. Bay fails in his mission to adapt a more intriguing, be it not original, story to his movie.
Rule #2-3: the action. Well, rest assured that Bay delivers this without a problem. Although there are some hints of criticism there, he repeats himself a bit too much in my opinion. There is a car scene that is almost taken directly from Bad Boys II, just a different location and a few different tools. However this is fresh air to the damp movie and tickles our senses just enough to keep us watching and yes even enjoy the twister of cars and explosions flying around like popcorn. His camerawork is top-notch, although again maybe a bit repeating himself from BB II. I kept getting the feeling Will Smith was going to pop up somewhere along the road. And if you look closely there are in fact some actors who were in Bad Boys II on screen. However, we must not break down everything because the action is certainly good enough, be it copied from another movie.
The cast, well I didn’t feel good about this cast. Ewan and Scarlett (the ever, ever beautiful Scarlett Johansson) match together pretty well but I didn’t get the feeling they were in the movie as well as I had hoped. There were two other actors who drew my attention a lot more actually. Sean Bean and Steve Buscemi, who once again deliver a great performance. Certainly Bean was cast perfectly for the roll he is portraying. Buscemi is Buscemi, a god amongst actors.
It is with mixed feelings that I look back at this movie, on the one hand I enjoyed the action very much, the story to a certain extend decent enough yet visually it looked like he got his inspiration with movies like Minority Report for some reason I cannot explain, it just kept playing in my head.
I hope Bay learns from this, keep it simple and give the people what they expect.
Rating: 6.5 / 10
