Clone Rangers: The Island reviewed
* * * 1/2
Despite the apparent evidence of the ubercool May-December almost-trystic Lost in Translation, Scarlett Johansson can't really act.
She was an inert cipher in the role of the naïve wife in A Good Woman, and in this she doesn't have to do much but run, pout and straighten her back for profile shots. But she is very pretty, with her frisky eyes, Farrah Fawcett-ish hair extensions and rubber-raft lips, and her decolletage needs no encouragement from anyone.
In fact, if they ever make a big-screen version of Aldous Huxley's dystopia Brave New World, she could be just right for the pneumatic, thwarted Lenina. Like the sterile, white-jumpsuited world of The Island, Brave New World involved another 'utopia' of cloning and perfection, though unlike here sex was encouraged (serious touching is verboten), as was soporific drug taking (here it's “Mind your sodium levels”, which would rather dull the underground party scene).
Huxley's novel was a deliberate reaction against what he saw as the Victorian nightmare of the nuclear family and, curiously enough, he wrote a final novel called, uh-huh, The Island (1962), in which he attempted to be a bit less satirical and a lot more, well, utopian in his description of what would constitute a really, really nice and good society. Dull and worthy? Let's just say that Michael Bay, the director of this very big and very noisy sci-fi epic (dialogue courtesy of the writers of Run, Dick, Run), would not have optioned it.
Ewan McGregor, in contrast to his co-star, has you totally believing that there really is a man and his clone – one the suspicious inhabitant of a seemingly perfect world with a cod-American, the other a boat designer with a light Scottish brogue. A reasonably buff McGregor even wrestles himself at one point, which might get fans of his, er, nakedly show-off art-movie The Pillow Book a bit excited. His dual role is not quite in the realm of conviction of Jeremy Irons' twins of Dead Ringers, but then Bay is no David Cronenberg. In passing, which is pretty much par for the course in this movie, Steve Buscemi is throwaway-brilliant as an unconventional plant worker who unintentionally gets Lincoln's escape juices flowing.
Those who remember the 70s TV series Logan's Run will be right at home here. “Another day in paradise,” is how one white-suited inhabitant of this world describes it. Given the preponderance of shapely women in swimsuits and lycra working hard on their abs and tans, I could see his point. But, like Logan's Run, where at 30 you're sent off to somewhere better, presumably to stop overcrowding and contravention of the Kyoto Protocol, The Island is driven – like its almost farcical product placement that seems to pass for wit in Hollywood – by more commercial motives. I don't think I'm talking out of school to reveal that this is a cloning installation, whereby bits of you are harvested as needed when your insurance policy owner – or her friendly transplant surgeon – makes the call. If you didn't pick all the major plot points up from the trailer, you simply weren't paying attention. The Island is a myth to keep the natives docile.
Need more influences? I suspect the makers have seen Minority Report and The Matrix, paying particular attention to the former's holographic analysis tools and the latter's nano-devices and motorway pile-up (or was it Mr & Mrs Smith? – no, too recent – or the marginally underrated schlockster Final Destination 2?). And maybe Coma. Or maybe I was the only one who saw that.
Anyway, Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) hasn't got the inclination or patience to stick with a cloning morality tale for long, and soon shifts into top gear for the chase when Lincoln makes his break. Into an LA in which tower-high train lines are de rigueur, but just about everything else is the same. Pity.
Fellow Brit Sean Bean is the evil doctor, Merrick, and Djimon Hounsou is the clean-up-the-mess guy who faces the inevitable crisis of conscience.
Despite plot holes the size of Arizona (that's a clue) and a pursuit that's just a bit too frenetic and vertiginous, The Island is actually a reasonable place to spend a couple of thought-free hours.
I was horrified to learn, in the course of my 'research' for this review, that a 2006 movie of Logan's Run is in the works. (The cut-off age is 21 rather than 30, it appears. Inflation has a lot to answer for.)
Despite the apparent evidence of the ubercool May-December almost-trystic Lost in Translation, Scarlett Johansson can't really act.
She was an inert cipher in the role of the naïve wife in A Good Woman, and in this she doesn't have to do much but run, pout and straighten her back for profile shots. But she is very pretty, with her frisky eyes, Farrah Fawcett-ish hair extensions and rubber-raft lips, and her decolletage needs no encouragement from anyone.
In fact, if they ever make a big-screen version of Aldous Huxley's dystopia Brave New World, she could be just right for the pneumatic, thwarted Lenina. Like the sterile, white-jumpsuited world of The Island, Brave New World involved another 'utopia' of cloning and perfection, though unlike here sex was encouraged (serious touching is verboten), as was soporific drug taking (here it's “Mind your sodium levels”, which would rather dull the underground party scene).
Huxley's novel was a deliberate reaction against what he saw as the Victorian nightmare of the nuclear family and, curiously enough, he wrote a final novel called, uh-huh, The Island (1962), in which he attempted to be a bit less satirical and a lot more, well, utopian in his description of what would constitute a really, really nice and good society. Dull and worthy? Let's just say that Michael Bay, the director of this very big and very noisy sci-fi epic (dialogue courtesy of the writers of Run, Dick, Run), would not have optioned it.
Ewan McGregor, in contrast to his co-star, has you totally believing that there really is a man and his clone – one the suspicious inhabitant of a seemingly perfect world with a cod-American, the other a boat designer with a light Scottish brogue. A reasonably buff McGregor even wrestles himself at one point, which might get fans of his, er, nakedly show-off art-movie The Pillow Book a bit excited. His dual role is not quite in the realm of conviction of Jeremy Irons' twins of Dead Ringers, but then Bay is no David Cronenberg. In passing, which is pretty much par for the course in this movie, Steve Buscemi is throwaway-brilliant as an unconventional plant worker who unintentionally gets Lincoln's escape juices flowing.
Those who remember the 70s TV series Logan's Run will be right at home here. “Another day in paradise,” is how one white-suited inhabitant of this world describes it. Given the preponderance of shapely women in swimsuits and lycra working hard on their abs and tans, I could see his point. But, like Logan's Run, where at 30 you're sent off to somewhere better, presumably to stop overcrowding and contravention of the Kyoto Protocol, The Island is driven – like its almost farcical product placement that seems to pass for wit in Hollywood – by more commercial motives. I don't think I'm talking out of school to reveal that this is a cloning installation, whereby bits of you are harvested as needed when your insurance policy owner – or her friendly transplant surgeon – makes the call. If you didn't pick all the major plot points up from the trailer, you simply weren't paying attention. The Island is a myth to keep the natives docile.
Need more influences? I suspect the makers have seen Minority Report and The Matrix, paying particular attention to the former's holographic analysis tools and the latter's nano-devices and motorway pile-up (or was it Mr & Mrs Smith? – no, too recent – or the marginally underrated schlockster Final Destination 2?). And maybe Coma. Or maybe I was the only one who saw that.
Anyway, Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) hasn't got the inclination or patience to stick with a cloning morality tale for long, and soon shifts into top gear for the chase when Lincoln makes his break. Into an LA in which tower-high train lines are de rigueur, but just about everything else is the same. Pity.
Fellow Brit Sean Bean is the evil doctor, Merrick, and Djimon Hounsou is the clean-up-the-mess guy who faces the inevitable crisis of conscience.
Despite plot holes the size of Arizona (that's a clue) and a pursuit that's just a bit too frenetic and vertiginous, The Island is actually a reasonable place to spend a couple of thought-free hours.
I was horrified to learn, in the course of my 'research' for this review, that a 2006 movie of Logan's Run is in the works. (The cut-off age is 21 rather than 30, it appears. Inflation has a lot to answer for.)
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