Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Caspian Tredwell-Owen (screenplay), Alex Kurtzman (screenplay)
Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Ewan McGregor and Djimon Hounsou
There is so much product placement in Michael Bay's bombastic The Island
that it's like reading 'Marketing Week' in a washing machine. Halfway
through the film, safely past the intriguing set-up and blithely
blasting from one deranged chase to another, your thoughts turn to the
role of brands in the modern action-adventure movie. Here's hoping
Microsoft, Nokia, Aquafina, Michelob, Budweiser, Calvin Klein, Ben &
Jerry and Puma got their money's worth. Each time their brands pop up,
we are knocked out of the film's world and back into our boring old one.
Sponsored content is the big thing in Hollywood right now. Suspension
of disbelief, it seems, is old hat.
If this seems like a minor point to open with, it is indicative of how flippantly constructed The Island is. Characters get out of impossible predicaments with no explanation, or desultory ones. Plot lines are introduced and not developed. Michael Bay directs as if he is wearing boxing gloves and the only punch in his repertoire is the haymaker. No feint, no jab, no fancy footwork. Just slug after slug after slug. He sets out to resuscitate cliché with bombast, but after each jolt of pyrotechnics the corpse flops back on the slab.
Squinting past all the sound and fury, you can just make out a decent idea for a film. What if the super-rich paid to have a clone made of themselves that could be harvested for organs when their own excesses get the better of them? What would the life of that clone be like? And what if that clone escaped out into the world to confront their original self? It's the kind of premise Philip K Dick would have made psychedelic hay out of. In fact, it is exactly the premise of Michael Marshall Smith's novel 'Spares', which DreamWorks had an option on for an age, but everyone has decided to be an asshole about that, and Marshall Smith gets no credit here.
If this seems like a minor point to open with, it is indicative of how flippantly constructed The Island is. Characters get out of impossible predicaments with no explanation, or desultory ones. Plot lines are introduced and not developed. Michael Bay directs as if he is wearing boxing gloves and the only punch in his repertoire is the haymaker. No feint, no jab, no fancy footwork. Just slug after slug after slug. He sets out to resuscitate cliché with bombast, but after each jolt of pyrotechnics the corpse flops back on the slab.
Squinting past all the sound and fury, you can just make out a decent idea for a film. What if the super-rich paid to have a clone made of themselves that could be harvested for organs when their own excesses get the better of them? What would the life of that clone be like? And what if that clone escaped out into the world to confront their original self? It's the kind of premise Philip K Dick would have made psychedelic hay out of. In fact, it is exactly the premise of Michael Marshall Smith's novel 'Spares', which DreamWorks had an option on for an age, but everyone has decided to be an asshole about that, and Marshall Smith gets no credit here.
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