THE ISLAND
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Have you ever looked at old photos of people with big top hats and muttonchop whiskers and said "Wow, people in olden times were really stupid!"? And someone older, like a history teacher, would say "Well, that was the style in those days. They didn't know any better." I suspect that when film students of the Future study the movies of the early twenty-first century and see action sequences filmed in spastic-monkey-cam and edited into shaky half-second cuts, they will make similar comments, and their professors will say "Totally! They must have been morons. Hey, don't bogart that syntho-doobie!"
Perhaps it would help NOT to have a sense of history, because if you've never seen "Logan's Run" or "Coma" or "The Clonus Horror" or "The 6th Day," you'd think this film is original and creative. But borrowing ideas from other movies (even with no intention of giving them back) is not a cinematic crime, and a film can still be well done if the characters are interesting, the plot is solid and the action well done. If you love the movies of Michael "What Can I Blow Up NOW?" Bay, you may consider his editing style acceptable. The cast is filled with familiar faces, which is both good and bad. It's always nice to see performers we like getting work, such as Michael Clarke Duncan and Shawnee Smith, but it's sometimes distracting to be noting who the actor is, rather than accepting them as a character in the story. For example, every time I see Ewan McGregor on screen, I think "Hi, Obi Wan!" And every time I see Scarlett Johansson, I think... well, that's personal. What's important here is that I thought all the actors did a good job at immersing themselves into their roles and gave some satisfying performances. Which brings us to the story itself. I don't want to give much away, but this is a definite "Leave Your Disbelief At The Door" flick, kind of like "Armageddon." If you can relax and accept what you're told, it's quite a ride. If you're prone to thoughts that start "How would they...?" or "But if that's true, then why...?", you may get tripped up into thinking about what you're seeing, which won't help you here. To sum up, for the price of admission you'll get: A summer popcorn flick of classic SF elements where the plot-based first half devolves into a Run-Bang-Boom second half, with some acceptable acting, annoying camera/editing for the action scenes, and enough plot holes to bother those who can't turn off their inner analyst (but no worse than most summer movies), with lots of chasing, gunfire, explosions, a little blood, some icky medical bits, and no nudity, but there is kissing. If you can't stand blatant product placement, you'll be really annoyed in the second half. If you're looking for two hours of fluffy entertainment, though, you could do worse. If you go, say "Hi!" to Obi Wan for me!
If you liked the movies below, you'll probably like this one (and vice versa):
Eight-Facet Info Rating, rated on a scale of 0 (None) to 4 (Lots!)): |