Moriarty

Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

I went to an event that Dreamworks hosted a few months ago where they showed a group of reporters about 45 minutes of the film and then gave us all free Pumas. Afterwards, at the reception, I was standing with my buddy Mr. Beaks (who is now running a brand-new site called Collider.com, in case you’ve missed him lately) and talking about what they showed us. Michael Bay walked up and asked, “So... what did you guys think?”

Before we could respond, he turned to me and smiled. “Well, not you. I know you don’t like anything I do.”

And it’s true that I’ve been critical of most of his work in the past. THE ROCK bugs the shit out of me on a script level, and Bay’s hyperkinetics in the film only serve to aggravate me more. ARMAGEDDON just feels like an exercise in bloat, and my PEARL HARBOR review was tough but fair, I thought. However, I unabashedly love BAD BOYS 2, which plays like a big crazy totally amoral video game, and has no shame about it. It seemed to me while watching that movie that Bay has grown as an action director. He’s gotten better at conveying mayhem, while he’s actually calmed down a bit with his visual style. My biggest gripe originally was that his action was almost incoherent, too rapid with the cuts, and it was impossible to get any sense of geography from scene to scene. With that freeway chase in BAD BOYS 2, though, or with that great scene where the camera revolves relentlessly through both rooms of a shoot-out, it was obvious that he’d gotten a lot more confident and inventive about how he shot a set piece. Because of that film, I found myself reassessing Bay as a director. I’ve also heard that Bay was the primary creative force behind that first great TEXAS CHAINSAW REMASSACRE teaser trailer, a beautiful example of “less is more,” and that gave me some hope as well. All of which brings me back to THE ISLAND, Bay’s first film for Dreamworks and, more significantly, his first film away from Bruckheimer, the man who made him.

I didn’t want to write about that first 45 minutes for two reasons. First, Bay seemed genuinely upset about having to show it in an unfinished state. He told us before the event that he’d spent the whole day looking through the DGA bylaws, trying to find an out, some way to force Dreamworks to cancel the event. The audience laughed, but I don’t think Bay was kidding. Second, I didn’t feel comfortable offering up a critical reaction to just one part of the film, especially since the trailers were selling all action, and what we saw was almost all plot. I finally saw the finished film last week, just before I took off for Vancouver, so I find myself just now getting around to the review. I’m glad, too. I’ve had a chance to think about the film so I can offer a measured reaction, which I think it deserves.

Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci have written some great episodes of ALIAS, and despite the fact that they were working from an original script by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, their fingerprints are all over the final film. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing. They know how to build tension very well, and the set pieces in this feel like they’ve been let off the leash, told to dream bigger now that they’re not working on TV. The big chase in the middle of the film is almost lunatic in its ambition. They’re also good with character, at least in setting up their leads using quick simple details. But they’re also used to having to tell a complete story in 42 minutes, and that means they frequently resort to dramatic shortcuts. The result is that THE ISLAND works pretty well, but in some important regards, it’s frustratingly abrupt and poorly thought out. Overall, I’d say this review is more positive than negative, because it’s a fun film. It’s a dumb fun film that thinks it’s smarter than it is, but it’s fun, and in this case, that matters.

I think the advertising for this film wrestled with the dual instincts of giving the whole thing away so people know what they’re getting and trying to preserve some sense of mystery, which they didn’t do very well. The result has been a jumbled, confusing sort of ad campaign, and it’s a shame. This is actually the best script Bay has worked from so far. Sure, there are elements of things like CLONUS or SPARES bouncing around in there, as well as ‘70s cheese like LOGAN’S RUN, but it manages to mix it all into something that has a certain energy and charm.

The first forty minutes or so, especially, manage to gradually draw you into the world of Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson), both living in a fairly idealized future society that looks like a cross between a Sunset Strip hotel and a mall, as most futuristic societies do. Bay pulls off a slow burn here, something I never would have imagined possible based on the attention span of his previous movies. This is the guy who got bored if a shot lasted a whole second, and now he manages to put together a pretty spiffy little first act where there are no explosions, no pyrotechnics, no gunplay. Instead, we watch Lincoln struggle with the questions he has about his existence and the existence of all the other people like him, all sharing this place and waiting for their names to be called in a lottery to determine who gets to go to The Island. See, the world’s been destroyed by some sort of disease or radiation or something vague, and The Island is the one pure untouched place. If you’re picked, you get to live out the rest of your life there, in paradise. That’s where they’re all eventually going, but the question of why they can’t just go now never seems to come up. Everyone accepts their place. Everyone except Lincoln, who begins to pick at the fabric of the Truman Sho... er, I mean who begins to unravel the Matri... no, wait... hold on. You get the point. The wool’s been pulled over everyone’s world, and only our hero has the pluck to figure it out.

Bay cast the movie right, because Ewan McGregor seems to know how familiar and implausible much of this is, and he plays it just right. He massages over the stickier plot points and he makes Lincoln an appealing lead. He doesn’t wallow in the angst that a role like this could easily permit. He just plays it like a child, constantly asking questions, constantly asking “Why?” Johansson, exceptional eye candy in the film, seems to enjoy the subversive qualities in Lincoln until she wins the lottery on the same day that Lincoln finally figures everything out. As quickly as you can say, “Soylent Green Is People!” the two of them are on the run, out in the real world, desperately trying to stay ahead of a goon squad of shadowy killers headed up by Laurent (Djimon Hounsou) at the request of Merrick (Sean Bean, in magnificent shit mode once again), the man who heads up the Institute and who is responsible for managing the dark secret that binds Lincoln and Jordan together.

From the moment the two of them start running, the film pretty much gives up all pretense of being a serious SF film about the politics of cloning and becomes a chase movie. As such, it’s a pretty good chase movie. There’s some obvious humor along the way, but not an overabundance of it, and many of the big moments are, indeed, spectacularly staged. The film’s centerpiece is the freeway/flying jet ski/cityscape chase scene that you’ve seen a lot of in the trailers, and it’s pretty grand. Bay has a real gift for making his use of CGI next to invisible. He shoots a lot of practical material he can blend in, and he sells the reality of these stunts. Also, McGregor and Johansson make a good pair of action leads. They’re game for anything, and it looks like Bay kicked the shit out of them for fun while filming. I found myself agog at how good the twin effects are for the scenes where McGregor comes face-to-face with himself, and Johansson has one sad, sweet moment where she sees the face of a little boy who is hers, but not hers at the same time. It’s not really an actor’s movie, though. Their main job is to run, and to look good doing it, and they both deliver quite well. Steve Buscemi and Michael Clarke Duncan shine in small roles, Duncan in particular, and Djimon Hounsou manages to do decent work even though his character has one of the most unmotivated, out-of-left-field character reversals late in the film that I’ve ever seen. It has to happen so that the ending plays out the way it does, but it’s like the writers just gave up even trying to explain it or set it up. Djimon just changes sides at the right moment for the exact right reason. It’s lazy writing, and it’s the sort of thing that might derail the film for some viewers.

Working with cinematographer Mauro Fiore, Bay’s done a great job here of chiseling the whole world out of candy-colored light. It scans real pretty on the rods and cones. It’s not all shot the same, either. There’s a placid sort of serenity to how everything’s shot inside the Institute, while everything on the outside is much more frantic and hand-held. It’s a strong visual plan, and THE ISLAND is nothing if not slick. You get the feeling that Michael Bay gets exactly the image he wants onscreen each and every time right now, and some of what he does is quite nice. Does the film really make sense when you start to unravel it? No.

In the end, this is agreeable but forgettable, a nice film for Bay, but it feels like he’s sort of marking time here. He seems to be looking for just the right film, something where his sensibilities really connect with a piece of material in a way that will send sparks into the audience, igniting their imaginations. Who knows? TRANSFORMERS seems like a fetish dream for a guy who loves to shoot hardware as much as Bay does, and I do think that Kurtzman & Orci are good writers. Here’s hoping THE ISLAND turns out to be a stylish but ultimately empty rev up to something great.

I’ll be back over the course of the weekend with reviews of THE BROTHERS GRIMM, MURDERBALL, THE ARISTOCRATS, and my set report for CIGARETTE BURNS. Until then...