darkside

Hmm, a Michael Bay movie that is good? I might have to see this with my own eyes.

Scott Weinberg

I saw it yesterday and I thought it was DAMN good. I'll admit that I was looking forward to seeing the movie -- but then again, I was also really looking forward to Pearl Harbor, and that movie made me want to pull my teeth out with a pliers.

Hardcore sci-fi fans will undoubtedly call The Island a mixture between Logan's Run, Gattaca, Minority Report, Blade Runner, and about a half-dozen others, and while I don't think it's better than any of those movies, I do think it's a damn good time. Lots of eye candy and just enough brain food to keep you from getting annoyed.

I'd say it's absolutely Michael Bay's best film yet, but that's not exactly high praise.

Just for the sake of clarity, I'd give:

Bad Boys - 2.5 stars out of 5
The Rock - 4 out of 5
Armageddon - 3 out of 5 (but it's a BIG "guilty pleasure" of mine)
Pearl Harbor - 1.5 out of 5
Bad Boys 2 - 0.5 out of 5 (seriously)
The Island - 4 (or even 4.5) out of 5

It's as if someone told the guy: "Hey, look. You know how to do the visuals. Now go find a challenging and smart screenplay, and make THAT movie."

And he did!

Easily the most pleasant surprise of the summer season for me. (There are some damn entertaining popcorn movies out right now, but none of them "surprised" me by being good.)

Kal-El

I was "meh" on the first trailer for this but the one attached to F4 sold me on it. I'm in.

scott shelton

Fandango had the film listed in several cities the film did not end up playing in.

I've heard the sneaks were a bit of a mess for Dreamworks.

Matthew Chmiel

According to Fandango, there is another sneak preview on Thursday for the film that's playing in two theaters in Vegas -- one that screened the flick last night and one that hasn't yet (however, said theater is holding a press screening sometime early this week). In accordance to what Shelton said, it could be another big fuck-up on Fandango's part. I guess we'll see... or we won't...

I went to a sneak that I had to find in the local newspaper last night. My friend and I both dug it, however, we left the theater saying: "Yeah, Michael Bay's Gattaca was pretty good."

Now, as everyone knows, I dig the Bay. I liked Bad Boys, I loved The Rock, I think Armageddon is a fantastic cheese fest, I thought there was a good 90 minute film located in the three hour mess that was Pearl Harbor, and I thought if Bay chopped 30 minutes out of Bad Boys II that it would've been "the guilty pleasure of 2003" (that title ended up going to 2 Fast 2 Furious that year). The man knows how to entertain, and he does it well in my book. I'd pay money to see him make a film in which paint dries. I dig the man that much.

Thankfully, with The Island, he is actually given a decent script in addition to actors that can actually act (no Martin Lawerence or Josh Hartnett here). Sure, the script feels lifted from some of the best sci-fi films in the past thirty years; but there's more to it than that. I was talking to Scott about this last night and we both agreed on that the film's visual effects are fantastic, the set design is great, the action scenes are intense and entertaining, and Scarlett Johanson is beautiful. Come on, what is not to like in this film?

Easily *** out of ****. 2005 is shaping up to be a great year for genre films (I have not seen Fantastic 4 yet).

Dr. DVD

How will someone who thinks Michael Bay has no talent other than to blow things up, is a total hack, but sees his movies for the spectacle value will take it? That's kind of how I think of him. I liked The Rock, but not much else. I would have liked Bad Boys II were it not so insensitive with its handling of violence.
Also, how bad does the movie lose steam towards the end? I seem to notice a pattern of a lot of this summers movies conking out in the last act.

EDIT: don't take this the wrong way, I want to see it. However, the weekend it opens I will be with a friend and he thinks Michael Bay is a bunch of suck. He still hasn't forgiven me for having his then GF and himself accompany me to a screening of Pearl Harbor. He also saw Bad Boys II on cable and thought it was a total pile of crap. Any advice on how to convince him to go to a showing with me?

Terrell

Couldn't agree with you more on those, especially Bad Boys 2. Every in of that film was shite!

But I've never hated Bay all that much. I dig The Rock, and the attack in Pearl Harbor and a bit of the Japanese stuff. Though I liked nothing else in the film. Still, I'll check this out.

Dr. DVD

Any chance of us getting an audio review from you?

mimi

Like you, I only like The Rock and not much else of his, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I went in with low expectations, so I suggest you do the same. The fact that it was being sneaked got me curious - the studio must think it's good enough to generate good WOM.

There's nothing too innovative about The Island. What's new is that it's the coming together of a Bay movie with a sci-fi movie like Gattaca. And it friggin' works dammit, which is the surprising thing. Ewan and Scarlett have great chemistry and I liked them instantly. In fact, I like all the actors in this. Some casting choices are downright clever (Djimon Hounsou of Amistad fame is made to hunt the clones who are branded like slaves). There's just enough sci-fi to give this movie a decent plot. Kudos to Bay for having the patience to calmly set up the story properly at the beginning instead of jumping into action right away. The action - particularly one scene involving a highway car chase, then a flying bike chase, and then a falling building logo - was so well done it made me realize how lacking good heart-pumping action scenes were this summer. There are constant bits of humor to lighten things up and some of it is actually pretty clever (the way Tom Lincoln is modeled after the real Ewan McGregor for instance). The movie ended well, IMO. The endgame is more intimately staged than Bay's other movies. There isn't explosions for explosions sake. Bay ended the movie with some pretty memorable images there, as befits an action movie that's sci-fi at heart.

Anyway, just tell your friend it's Michael Bay meets sci-fi, which is kinda new, and that it's fun. But if you can go in with low expectations like me, you will come away very pleasantly surprised.

scott shelton

I think Fandango is accidentally listing Thursday promo screenings for ISLAND on their site. I can't imagine Dreamworks would hold a public sneak on a Thursday night.

Matthew Chmiel

The only promo screenings left in Vegas for The Island from what I know are on 7-13 and 7-20, not Thursday...

scott shelton

Then the mystery deepens...

Rypro 525

saw it last night. great flick, and im a fan of bay's work also (yes also bad boys 2). i'm surprised as well that he indeed took his time with the story. surprised at how brutal some of the violence is given that this is a pg-13. (boy I wish this was R with a more say "explicit" sex scene.

REL77

I saw this Sat night, and was highly embresed with it. Not your typical Michael Bay Film (see my sig to see what I think of Bay). A good mix of SciFi and action. Nothing to over the top (but still enough to satisfy me). A very well written and well acted movie. I wouldnt have thought it was Bay if I didnt know. Well done Bay, you are getting much better. My Fiance who hates popcorn movies loved it as well.

Geofferson

Glad to hear some good words about this movie...I'm looking forward to seeing it myself!

RockStrongo

I saw it Saturday night....I thought it was very mediocre. I found myself entertained occasionally, bored sometimes and just not impressed after it was over.

Im also sick of PG-13 action movies.

matome

Good to hear a lot of people enjoying this. Looking forward to checking this out.

B.A.

You guys are starting to get my hopes up for this one. I was going to check it out anyway, but you have piqued my interest a bit.

scott shelton

VARIETY...


The Island


A DreamWorks release of a DreamWorks and Warner Bros. presentation of a Parkes/MacDonald production. Produced by Walter F. Parkes, Michael Bay and Ian Bryce. Executive producer, Laurie MacDonald.
Director, Michael Bay. Screenplay, Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, based on a story by Tredwell-Owen.

Lincoln Six Echo/
Tom Lincoln - Ewan McGregor
Jordan Two Delta/
Sarah Jordan - Scarlett Johansson
Albert Laurent - Djimon Hounsou
Merrick - Sean Bean
Starkweather - Michael Clarke Duncan
Jones Three Echo - Ethan Phillip
Carnes - Max Baker
McCord - Steve Buscemi


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By JUSTIN CHANG
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"The Island" is no paradise. In his latest exercise in sensory overkill, producer-helmer Michael Bay takes on the weighty moral conundrums of human cloning, resolving them in a storm of bullets, car chases and more explosions than you can shake a syringe at. Frenetic actioner about refugees from a genetic cloning plant starts off intriguingly, burns up its ideas in the first hour and pads out the rest with joltingly repetitive action sequences. Given Bay's built-in, mostly male audience, DreamWorks and Warner Bros. look to harvest decent if not spectacular opening returns, though specimen's long-term viability is far less assured.


It's the year 2019, and Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) is one of several hundred survivors of a cataclysm that left the whole world contaminated, save one place -- the eponymous Island. This lush retreat, Lincoln and the other refugees are promised, will one day be their home. For now, they're kept in a lavish but sterile research facility, where authorities force them to wear identifying wrist bracelets; their moods, diet and metabolism are carefully monitored; and male-female "proximity" is strictly forbidden.

Suspicious by nature and prone to prophetic nightmares, Lincoln finds his worst fears confirmed after Starkweather (Michael Clarke Duncan), selected by random lottery to go to the Island, instead winds up on a slab. When his friend and burgeoning love interest, Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson), is the next one to win the lottery, Lincoln grabs her and together they stage a jailbreak. Alarmed by the breach, sinister mastermind Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean, adding another to his gallery of villains) hires a mercenary (Djimon Hounsou) to hunt them down.

One of the small charms of "The Island" is that its test-tube protags, far from being hardened heroes, are a pair of brainwashed innocents, sealed off from the outside world and generally lacking in social smarts. McGregor exploits this most winningly, affecting an earnest gee-whiz streak and speaking his lines in a boyish, slightly higher register.

Faring not so well is Johansson, usually the subtlest of actresses, who in her first major action role has been encouraged to make a shrill, bombastic spectacle of her character's cluelessness.

Another downside of Lincoln and Jordan's ignorance is that by the time they realize what's up -- that they're walking "insurance policies," raised only to supply organs for their genetically identical owners -- auds will have long since figured everything out.

While the essentially surprise-free narrative plays catch-up, there's little to do but sit back and admire Nigel Phelps' gleaming production design; the biotech facility, in particular, suggests a cross between a day spa, a spaceship and a maximum-security prison. Yet even here, Bay's direction zips along at such an unmodulated rush, so eager to get on with the next set-piece or expository line of dialogue, that auds will have precious little time to soak up the images, much less allow their potentially troubling implications to deepen and resonate.

Setting and premise conjure countless visual and thematic echoes from other films, including "The Matrix," with its paranoid dystopian vision and roomful of sticky birth-pods, and even "The Truman Show," with its 24-hour surveillance cameras and megalomaniacal controller. One scene, featuring an army of mechanized, eye-scanning spiders, is lifted straight out of the more convincingly futuristic "Minority Report."

The references feel thoroughly secondhand; Bay ultimately is interested in the science and ethics of cloning only insofar as they provide a backdrop for all the vehicular chaos he's set to unleash. (Ancillary moral: Clones are human, too.)

In terms of spectacle, pic is a pileup of kinetic mayhem, as Lincoln and Jordan's first actions in the real world include dodging bullets, destroying several police cars and crashing a hovercraft into a skyscraper.

Yet for all the vertiginous camera movements and ace visual effects, the action remains tension-free and largely incoherent, thanks to attention-deficit editing by Paul Rubell and Christian Wagner.

Scribes Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci save their best lines for the superbly snarky Steve Buscemi, as a facility staffer who comes to the clones' aid (and has a priceless exchange with "Ghost World" co-star Johansson in the process). And pic has sly fun with Lincoln's and Jordan's "owners"; former is played by McGregor in an effective second role, while latter is glimpsed in Johansson's real-life Calvin Klein ad. Other product placements, particularly by Aquafina, are too numerous to mention.



Camera (Technicolor prints, Panavision widescreen), Mauro Fiore; editors, Paul Rubell, Christian Wagner; music, Steve Jablonsky; production designer, Nigel Phelps; supervising art director, David Sandefur; art directors, Jon Billington, Sean Haworth, Martin Whist; set decorator, Rosemary Brandenburg; costume designer, Deborah L. Scott; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Peter J. Devlin; supervising sound editors, Per Hallberg, Karen Baker Landers; visual effects supervisor, Eric Brevig; special visual effects and animation, Industrial Light & Magic; assistant director, Josh McLaglen; stunt coordinator, Kenny Bates; associate producers, Steven P. Saeta, McLaglen, Bates, Heidi Fugeman Lindelof, Matthew Cohan; casting,

hapgilmore

Why is there so much hate on Bad Boys 2? I consider myself a big michael bay fan and i consider that to be his best film, along with armageddon. Surely the haters must recognize the technical skill that went into BB2?

Troy Stiffler

Bad Boys II kicked ass. I missed the Mark Mancina score. And I think Mike and Marcus turned it to total fucking assholes (my subtle wordplay is that of a sailor, I know). It's TONS of fun. But the cockiness really takes away. As soon as they spoke a little sincerity (the police station scene where nobody wants to help save Marcus' sister), the movie definately turned for the better. But then it turned back, again. I'm always up for violent, physical-effect-laden, bad-mouthing, police escapism.

I'll be seeing The Island this weekend. Really looking forward to it, now that the general concensus is positive.

Terrell

I'll give you two quotes from two critic reviews that sum up my thoughts exactly.

Plus, Will and Martin's schtick got really tired, really fast. Throw in a weak, incoherent storyline, and that about sums up my feelings. If you like it, great.

Um, no! That would be The Rock, which is easily superior to Bad Boys 2. BB2 may be his worst film. In fact, forget the "may be."

For what it's worth, I don't hate Bay at all. He's just out their doing his thing and I'm fine with that. I loved the Rock, and enjoyed Armageddon. I even think the bombing of Pearl Harbor in that movie was very well done. Just the rest of the film wasn't. I even look forward to The Island.

jaeufraser

The funny thing is, save for the last thing (I did find their schtick fairly lame at times) everything before that is exactly why I liked the film. It's a stupid action movie, but like Rambo 2 it's tons of destruction and over the top idiocy. It's fun, and only bogged down by...some bad comedy and melodrama. But the action is great imo...and as a fan of some really stupid action movies, I think it works quite well in that respect.

But I can see why people hate the movie too.

Dr. DVD

I was liking BB2 until they started the surgery on dead bodies and then started shoving cadavers out of the back of a vehicle in a high speed chase for laughs. While the scene where they mess with the date of Martin Lawrence's daughter was amusing, it was still mean spirited.

Matthew Chmiel

Pffft, that's what was fun about the film, it was completely mean spirited! Name me any other mainstream big budget blockbuster which would have the balls to pass off such tasteless and mean spirited humor?!?!

Then again, I'm a sick motherfucker, so maybe that's why I enjoyed Bad Boys II in those aspects.