Pros: Explosions, Steve Buscemi
Cons: EVERYTHING ELSE
The Bottom Line: Just don't waste the time, money, or effort at loading the DVD player; spend those few calories scratching.
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot. Let’s see.
1 cup THX 1138
1 cup The Matrix semi-clarified (skim it but do not remove all confusion)
½ cup The Running Man
2 cups Gattaca
Dash of Metropolis
Hint of Soilent Green
Fellini’s Satyricon for set destruction
4 lbs of shameless product promotion
Set aside 4 ounces of hard liquor of 6 beers. Drink before viewing as your sense of disbelief is going to need some help being turned off.
Put it in a blender, then take the mixture and put it in a juicer. Let it ferment and you get The Island.
I rarely use the word turkey to describe a movie. Only a special set of films get that designation. Big budget films that contain all of the standard action clichés but nothing original or thought provoking—this movie did provoke thoughts (more on that in a second), but the film chose to ignore it. Further, a turkey is made more by committee than not, has a hunky guy and a big breasted chick so it can be considered a type of date movie for the 20 somethings and under—also, there must be reference to bodily functions for the mook factor. In brief, a turkey is a big budget adventure flick intended to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
The quick plot summary—and it will fit on the back of a napkin—is that a company makes clones. These clones believe themselves to be survivors of a worldwide contamination. They lead boring, controlled lives. Their hope is to go to the last place on the planet that is contaminate free, The Island. Upon going into labor, all women get to go to the island. The rest are chosen by a lottery. One clone becomes self aware, escapes, causes a mess of problems, returns as a type of epigone messiah, everything blows up. Big kiss at the end.
Typically I avoid action flicks because I consider them a waste of time—the overwhelming majority of them are just glorified porn (crap dialog in between fight/chase scenes replacing idiotic dialog between sex scenes). However, I like Ewan McGregor and Steve Buscemi very much, and I have to admit being a complete sucker for big explosions and dynamic car chases, so I watched this one.
There were two car chases in this one. You might think, wow, one covers the cost of seeing it, the second is gravy. Well, you can see it that way if you like, but the way I interpret it is one was filmed by cameramen who were hopped up on caffeine and cocaine (and who have to pee and are doing the pee-pee dance, but aren’t allowed to stop filming), the camera jumps and wiggles and generally makes SEEING anything impossible. The second car chase is a copy of the first, but shorter.
The biggest problem I had with the first car chase is that a huge truck is carrying train axles and seems to be driven by a man who has consumed the alcohol mentioned in the recipe so that HIS disbelief is also suspended sufficiently. The fact that the driver has to be oblivious is an action movie requirement, so I suppose that is somewhat forgivable. But train axles? This is a future where ‘sub’ ways are ‘super’ ways in that they move around above the ground. The notion that something as 18th century as trains would still be in operation is just idiotic. One would think that they would help with the chase though because of the chaos they would create on a Los Angeles freeway. They do. But the director decided to have the camera work act as a metaphor for chaos and jerk and swerve in nauseating and incomprehensible ways.
The explosions are pretty nice though.
Finally, however, is the end. The end blows a fetid wind past a sewage treatment plant, and for 2 reasons.
The shortest reason to explain is the idiotic big Hollywood kiss. If there is a worse cliché, I’d rather be kept ignorant of it.
The worst reason of all is that all of the clones are set free—including, as luck would have it, the clone for the president. When I saw this happen I was reminded of a stunt pulled by some well-meaning animal rights activists in Britain who set free a couple of thousand caged minks. If the story stopped there, most of us would give a large huzzah. But the story didn’t stop there. These mink had been raised in captivity and more than half of them were killed in a very short amount of time by being run over or eaten by predators, or killing each other. It was a stunt laced with the largest doses of good intention but not at all thought out.
The analog to this is a desert hillside full of boringly dressed clones. Suddenly a group of ‘people’ is introduced into a society they never knew existed and their doppelgangers exist in this world already. What in the hell is going to happen to them? Huzzah, they are free. I guess what the movie failed to show after the big Hollywood kiss is that most of them were run over, bitten by poisonous snakes, starved to death, got heat stroke or whatever. But that would spoil the cliché fun.
There are some half-hearted attempts to go into the ethical and philosophical conundrum that cloning causes (which is only slightly less complicated than the conundrum caused by messing with time). But these are glossed over quickly for a sound byte before the next sex—I mean chase--scene to happen. There are also some funny moments when the cloned McGregor and Johansson are interacting in the real world, but they are also predictable and get old fast.
The only good thing about this turkey is Steve Buscemi. He seems to enjoy playing any part at all. I have totally despised some of the films in which he was cast, but I have always liked his performance (even if it could sometimes be super annoying like his character in Fargo.
Recommended:
No
Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older
