The Island

[danlo]

Flicks is a tough room to post in so before y'all storm at me I'll list what I thought of as positives before listing the negatives and giving you my real opinion.

I think part of the problem in general is the "60 minutes into movie Hollywood compression factor", I'm sure you can think of alot of movies that suffer from this, but I'll list Stargate, Dune and Total Recall as Sci-Fi examples. The movies start out great have all this detail and then all of a sudden they realize that they're almost out of time and try to compress 2 hours of explanation into 45 mins of gloss.

They tired very hard not to let it happen in The Island, but if I have any real criticism it's a quick ending and Lincoln's learning curve, which at times bordered on the unbelievable. Another problem was actually postive--in a way--the movie held my attention because of familiar traits from other movies--it's usually the other way around. The Island wasn't based on a Phillip K. Dick story, but it might as well have been. Elements of Total Recall, Minority Report, Imposter and (the book) The World Jones Made were definately there. The unreality (very cool though) element was complimented by themes from Vanilla Sky and the 13th Floor. The chase was similar to The Matrix Reloaded, Minority Report and Logan's Run.

In a weird way it really is a remake of Logan's Run and that's what kept it interesting for me. Like the "mind-crime prophets" in Minority Report, the end of the city limits in The 13th Floor and the food source in Soylent Green there is a fairly mindblowing twist. One problem I had was that Steve Buscemi's character seemed to have all the good lines and after he was gone (something felt like is was really missing) McGregor's character was exposed as two dimensonal until his face-off at the end.

There were some cool twists in the city and the advanced technology effecst were great: like the nano-bugs and the electro-glide train--but the city looked like a rip off of The Fifth Element. Well I just did what I said I wouldn't do, it just seemed that not enough detail given from the beginning of the city chase to the ending watered it down a bit--but, I guess, that's Hollywood.

Kill me now, I liked it, but I'd only give it a B- for overall effort ( B+ if you add the Scarlett Johassen eye candy factor

)

[aTOMiC]

I bought the ISLAND dvd with apprehension due to its poor showing at the box office but I thought I understood the premise well enough to be certain it fell within a genre I knew I shouldn't be unhappy with. After watching it the first time my wife and I both turned to each other and asked..."What was wrong with that?" Though it wasn't flawless I found it entertaining and worth the purchase. I agree with nearly all of your observations, danlo. Frankly I enjoyed Imposter a bit more than Minority Report as far as the films were concerned.
Oh yes. Logan's Run was certainly on my mind while watching the Island.

[Brinn]

A very pleasant surprise after all the negative press and the Mike Bay association. Scarlett was very hot!

P.S.
Why didn't Djimon Honsou ask the Ewans who the president of the USA was or some other bit of contemporary trivia before he did what he chose to do?!?!

[danlo]

I had the same question Brinn, and I actually had to run it back to see exactly where the President appeared before we knew who he was. I know the movie was long enough but I could have handled another 20 minutes of Lincoln screwing up and almost killing himself to find out how things really worked (like the fly-cycle) instead of almost automatically doing it--re: his "learning curve". By that I'm not saying make the "recall team" look inept--but find to a way to throw in a twist (besides the heat from the desert messing with the braclet tracking) that buys the "fugitives" more time to figure some things out on their own...

[sgt.null]

got to admit that the road scene was awesome. but too many logic flaws. b minus at best. Scarlet was nice to look at as well.

[Cail]

I too was pleasantly surprised by it. While it is a pretty blatant retelling of Logan's Run (with a little bit of Coma trown in), I thought it was well done. Sure it had some leaps in logic, every sci-fi/action film does, but I found it quite entertaining.

[sgt.null]

nice call on Coma, didn't think anyone remembered that movie. the actions scenes were great in the Island, but not much tension.

[dlbpharmd]

I'm with you guys, I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this film. The road scene was pretty cool, and Scarlet Johansen - well, that's just about as hot as a woman can possibly get.

[sgt.null]

I will see the Woody Allen film for Scarlet, and I have disliked everything of his with the exception of Zelig.

[Nathan]

Watched the island the other day.

Haven't seen Logan's run, (never even heard of it) or any of the other films that've been mentioned.

I enjoyed it a lot, I'm a fan of sci-fi films. I liked the way the world gradually opened up from the facility, gradually showing you what was really going on.