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Movies that bang
by Jordan Hiller

The Island (2005)

The stars of Michael Bay’s latest summer extravaganza are first seen together on a lunch line, wearing white athletic suits, and apparently living in some pristine, antiseptic bio-dome where the human race has been forced to live following a global contamination in the year 2019. Our heroine, Jordan Two Delta, played by sumptuously talented actress Scarlett Johansson, teaches fellow resident Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor, doing the best he could under the circumstances), that to get some strips of fried pork (a restricted food for some) you need to put on a performance and manipulate the affable lunch lady.

How fitting, I thought, that Scarlett begins her first official career sell-out role with purposely bad acting in order to bring home the bacon. After her breakout in 2003’s Lost in Translation, and then maintaining her credibility with strong work in smaller, interesting movies like A Love Song for Bobby Long and In Good Company, it was only a matter of time before she did a movie where her lips and bust would earn a hefty paycheck, the corporate sponsors would be popping up everywhere, and her dialogue would mainly consist of the word “Run!.” Enter Michael Bay, a successful man who desires to be nothing more than entertainer to the idiot masses – a man who managed to take the likes of Steve Buscemi, an art-house lifer, and create a near mainstream movie star (Buscemi did Bay’s unforgivable Armageddon, and appears here as well).

So while I do lament the loss of Ms. Johansson’s innocence, I must reluctantly admit that if you’re gonna sell your soul in Hollywood, The Island is about as good as it gets. With a commendably patient build up (you know Bay was itching to blow something up already), the film manages to, with some incredibly expensive looking sets, create a believable Orwellian atmosphere where Big Brother is watching, yet we don’t know why. Bay, the director of such earthbound monster truck rallies as Bad Boys, The Rock, and of course Bad Boys II, seemed to be a different, and far better, more resourceful director when it came to pure sci-fi. He finds a very comfortable and relaxed pace early on and his audience can’t help but grow increasingly aware, with butterflies of anticipation, that something devastating will be revealed, and after that…hold on to something.

It is difficult to discuss the true merits of this movie without giving a key plot device away so be wary if you continue reading.

The provocative story and screenplay by Caspian Tredwell-Owen dwells on a topic that maybe ten years ago would have felt as relevant as battling Martians, but today, with stem cells and cloning capabilities jumping from the pages of science fiction to fact, we are faced with a frightening near future (2019!) where certain questions in The Island must be taken with grave seriousness. If someday we do harvest genetic matches of our physicals selves so we can farm organs and blood just in case…what will these “clones” be considered? Will they have personalities and identities, and if so, how can they be convinced to give of themselves to elongate the life of their owner? In this sense, the best elements of The Island come in the philosophical arena. It is Bay’s first message movie and, whether intentionally or otherwise, it makes a strong, reverberating political statement against the concept of cloning. After this statement is made however, and of course it is made in a simplistic, heavy handed way, the filler of the movie is brainless car chases using futuristic vehicles, absurdly narrow escapes, slow motion toughness, and fire balls (and some of the most embarrassingly painful product placements you will ever see). Once the hook of the movie is revealed (“There is NO ISLAND!”) and our protagonists make a dash into the deserts of Arizona, the writing and the credibility that Bay had protected until that point are lost in a sea of bad cliché’s and no further need for anyone to act. Toward the end, a movie once so vivid and full of potential becomes edgeless and the formerly involving writing collapses into a series of meaningless exchanges between good and evil. It is not that there isn’t a certain rush and popcorn entertainment value in watching a sinister dude get decapitated by a rocketing tank, but with The Island, a film where Bay had us convinced that he was more than Crazy Harry with a camera, it stung a bit to wind up with just a better imitation of the same old thing.

Top Ten Sell-Out Performances

10.) Mathew Broderick (Godzilla)

9.) Hillary Swank (The Core)

8.) John Cusack (Con Air)

7.) Morgan Freeman (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves)

6.) Don Cheadle (Swordfish)

5.) Lili Taylor (The Haunting)

4.) Winona Ryder (Mr. Deeds)

3.) Robert Duvall (Deep Impact, Gone in Sixty Seconds)

2.) Harvey Keitel (National Treasure)

1.) Billy Bob Thornton (Armageddon)