Originally published 7/22/2005
The Island
Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Story by Caspian Treadwell-Owen, Screenplay by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci and Caspian Treadwell-Owen
Producers: Michael Bay, Ian Bryce, Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi, Michael Clarke Duncan
In Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson’s extraordinary pre-Lord of the Rings true crime film about two New Zealand schoolgirls who murdered one of their mothers, the ending revealed that a condition of the girls’ sentence was that they never meet again. Their proximity created some sympathetic vibration, activated a latent madness which made them killers. Apart they could be harmless.
I wonder now if the same arrangement could be struck for producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay. For while their collaborations have been gaseous abominations to a film (think Armageddon and Pearl Harbor), separate from their union Jerry Bruckheimer as shown himself capable of making solid entertainment. And now, with The Island, God help me I never thought I would write these words, Michael Bay has made a good movie.
I won’t call it a masterpiece; there is only so far down this road I can tread with open eyes. I doubt I will ever own the DVD. But in terms of pacing, clarity of storytelling and sympathy with its characters, The Island is far and away Bay’s best work since that “Aaron Burr” milk commercial, and an exciting enough way to spend a couple of hours if you are in the mood for an unchallenging science-fiction thriller.
I say “unchallenging” because the movie never uses the implications of its conceit as more than a trigger for chases, fights, special effects and the odd joke here and there. This is not condemnable in and of itself, because under the guiding hand of not the bombastic enabler Bruckheimer but able eye-level producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald (Gladiator, Road to Perdition, most of Steven Spielberg’s recent output), for once Bay loosens his grip just the crucial little bit on the pretense that he is making some cinematic passion play, and relaxes to enjoy the pure kinetics of it.
Most of the advertising for this movie has already given the game away, but on the off, off, off-chance you have slipped in unawares I will try to preserve the nasty surprise awaiting our heroes. Sometime in future, Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan MacGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) are residents of a secure facility where the last survivors of a planet-wide contagion are supposedly protected. They wear identical white pajamas, exercise regularly, do as they are told, and wait in hopes that when the next “Lottery” is drawn, theirs will be the name picked to go to The Island, a tropical paradise representing the last pristine environment on the surface.
Bay shows commendable patience setting up Lincoln and Jordan’s world and its rhythms: The nannyish computer system which scans your urine and can order changes in your diet if too much sodium shows up. The “proximity alert” which causes black-suited guards to come rushing over if a male and female spend too much time touching. Residents drink Aquafina and unwind over a futuristic holographic X-Box – one wonders why they would need brand names in a world where all their activities are dictated to them, but this is a summer movie so you expect a little Happy Meal pimping with your action.
Needless to say, what they think is going on isn’t quite what is really going on; and because of an unauthorized friendship with a tech supervisor who enjoys the odd rebellion (Steve Buscemi), Lincoln learns just enough to whisk Jordan away from a dreadful fate.
At this point the movie becomes a protracted chase, in structure and look the movie owes much to Minority Report, right down to little miniaturized computers that scuttle like bugs and do very uncomfortable things with your eyes. In charge of the chasing is a mercenary named Laurent (Djimon Hounsou), who is a fearsome badass, but his work is crippled by the fact that he can only walk in slow motion.
Yes, at this point some of Bay’s penchant for wretched excess shows itself; but unlike his past extravaganzas I didn’t feel like my skull was being relentlessly pummeled with “excitement”. The casting of McGregor and Johansson is key, both are true talents who can hold our concern for their plight even against so large a canvas of special effects. Other parts are filled well too, from Michael Clarke Duncan in a small role as a fellow Lottery “winner” to Buscemi and Hounsou. Sean Bean plays a doctor named Merrick who is central to all of this, and as an actor of long experience in movies of this size he knows exactly what is expected of him.
The movie has a beautiful, colorful look; it is photographed by Mauro Fiore, a protégé of the great Janusz Kaminski (Spielberg’s sole D.P. since Schindler’s List) who is building an impressive resume of his own in recent years. Instead of the over-keyed let’s-make-everything-look-like-a-Chevy-commercial look Bay has favored in the past, there is a shocking and highly-effective contrast between the cool and clinical world of white jumpsuits and the over-saturated color of the movie’s second half. Nigel Phelps’ production design is a useful ally in this as well.
At times it is over-designed – why are doctor’s offices in the future always these high-ceilinged caverns with diagonal walls and stainless steel everywhere? Where are the diplomas and paperwork and the jar of tongue depressors? And at times it is just plain too cutesy – we are told that the inhabitants of this Center are only educated to the level of 15-year-olds, so they all act a little petty and surly and are thus indistinguishable from the grown-up heroes of Bay’s previous pictures. And after providing us with a perfectly respectable climax, the movie tacks on another which not only feels too truncated by itself for the size of its ambitions, it makes the movie end up feeling too long.
As I have said it’s no masterpiece, but it is an entertaining ride. It doesn’t pull any tricks you have not seen before, but makes a sincere effort to play fair by its own rules. I hope I am not grading on a curve, because it might cost me my cynical cinephile membership badge to give a positive review to a Michael Bay movie. But with The Island he has taken a clear step in the right direction as a filmmaker, and you should encourage that sort of thing.