I honestly thought I would enjoy "The Island," Michael Bay in the director's chair or not. The cast is fantastic, the premise interesting, and the chances for a thrilling, action packed adventure are limitless. Also, since the plot deals with a touchy subject that is of great relevance to our society, "The Island" could have employed some fantastic themes about the morality and ethics of human cloning.

But since any of those would have involved making a GOOD movie, Bay chooses to ignore all of those and deliver a film that falls somewhere in between "Minority Report" and "Logan's Run" but without any intelligence or class that those two films managed to display. It's "Armageddon" all over again, except, well, worse.

The plot, or lack of, involves a young man named Lincoln Six Echo, who resides in a strange community along with other "survivors" of a contamination that destroyed most of the population. Soon, he learns that he and everyone else are actually clones, and when they win trips to the last remaining paradise, the Island, they are actually being killed and chopped up for body parts and the like. So Lincoln grabs his friend Jordan Two Delta and they run like hell...and run...and run...and run some more...and since this is a Michael bay film, their is a lot of crap blowing up all the time.

This is only the second film I have ever seen in theaters that has actually given me a headache. I was not just annoyed or bothered, my head actually hurt when the credits began to roll. I went home, popped a Motrin, and wished I has saw "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" again. "The Island" makes "Fantastic Four" look like "Citizen Kane"'s slightly retarded half brother (that's the best compliment I can muster for it, but F4 better take what it can get from me).

I have heard many people call "The Island" Bay's most intelligent film to date. Huh. Intelligence is not a word that I associate with Bay, whose directing style I associate with that of a 5 year old boy playing with his GI-Joes in his sandbox. The smartest thing Bay does is assemble a great cast: Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson somehow manage to overcome the material and still not look like total losers in the lead roles and in the role of "the man who fills in plot holes," Steve Buscemi can do no wrong (I hope Buscemi puts his paycheck to good use and buys himself something nice). Once again, Sean Bean plays a villain (and one who simply refuses to die in the climax as well) and Djimon Hounsou is completely wasted as the chief henchman; why hire an Oscar nominated actor is all he's going to do is stand around, sweat and yell?

These great actors do little to improve the material, but they do occasionally make it watchable. But whenever Buscemi or McGregor has a decent scene going, Bay throws a chase scene or a fight in and this is where the film completely dies. Bay is an incompetent filmmaker when it comes to shooting average scenes; his shots tend to last for about 1.4 seconds and they randomly cut to bizarre angle. His camera never stops moving and he attempts to cram so much into a scene using quick, odd edits that the entire sequence becomes bloated and almost nausea inducing. Within the first five minutes of the movie, I realized that Bay was up to his usual tricks and when the first action scene hit, I was no surprised to notice things get worse tenfold. Picture, if you will, two men fighting on screen. Now, imaging someone tackling the cameraman from behind and shaking him rapidly in an attempt to make him drop the camera. Make sure the shot cuts ever .5 seconds. Voila! Michael Bay action cinematography! Even if we could see the action, it is trite, uninspired, and a rip-off of Bay's previous movies (including a highway chase that is a shameful copy of Bay's own abysmal "Bad Boys II").

Certainly action films can have intelligence, but the intelligence here boils down to "I'm a clone, you're a clone, cloning is bad and this is bad and Sean Bean is a bad man so we can blow things up because it is cool an cloning is bad." It never goes into any sort of depth and it never tries to make a point. It wants to be taken seriously, but it never makes an effort. It doesn't help that most of the supporting clones are played for cheesy laughs in that typical Bay way. Really, really, really, really bad humor. Jokes so bad that I had to laugh because I couldn't believe I was hearing them. Okay, so you have the erratic and destructive action, bad humor...what other bay trademarks can you expect? Lots of cleavage (including a stripper! Whoo hoo!), character motivation randomly changing, random moments of slow motion, a booming musical score that sounds like an '80s reject metal band and lots and lots and lots of product placement (after awhile, I was trying to stave off boredom so my filmgoing companions decided to count obvious, centered, product placements; there where 19).

In a recent interview, Bay (I'm paraphrasing) said: "Fuck the critics! I'm making the movies I want with lots of explosions and cheesy humor!"

And he's making movies because...? Who gives this man money? He has consistently cranked out stinker after stinker and his films are never entertaining (well, except for "The Rock") and they are great examples of why men with the IQ of bricks should not be directing movies. "The Island" is the worst blockbuster release of the year. Avoid it all costs.

Now my headache's back.

© Written by Jacob Hall

How We Rated This Film TC Candler -     Richard Propes -     Jacob Hall - D-

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