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Island (The)
R3 - South Korea - Warner Home Video Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak and Joe Harbridge (30th January 2006). |
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The Film
 While I don’t usually feel the need to share my thoughts about a movie, this movie proved to be an exception. As an old school fan of science fiction, it was clear that while parts of this movie were clearly well written, it "borrowed" a lot from some of the more obscure classics of the genre. In the film, Ewan McGregor plays Lincoln Six Echo while Scarlet Johansson plays Jordan Two Delta (names too similar in style to the characters of THX-1138 for it to be a coincidence), both of whom are the clones of wealthy people in the real world, and act as an insurance policy providing genetically matched body parts in case of accident or illness. They are not alone, but live in a large enclosure with other clones, who are kept passive by the strict rules of the enclosure, and the prospect of winning "the lottery", a one way ticket to the only part of the earth that has not been contaminated where they can live with the previous winners in a state of utopia. Once again, if you have seen Logan’s Run (1976) then you will no doubt also get a certain sense of deja vu, as Lincoln is quick to discover that "the lottery" is a fraud (a la the carousel) and that the real world awaits, if only he can escape. And escape he does, taking Jordan along with him, starting what is to become an almost endless series of (often pointless) chase scenes as the hired killers that are sent after them try to contain the situation. (I will stop the comparisons now, except to say that this is basically identical to Logan’s Run, with the protagonist and the heroine breaking out of their enclosures to confront the real world-in fact, Logan 5 has almost been copied, as it is later revealed that the Echo in Lincoln stands for generation 5, Logan 5 and Lincoln 5, come on!?) I won’t spoil the ending for you (so far I haven’t really mentioned anything that you couldn’t pick up from watching the trailer), but suffice to say, they escape, some people they meet try to help them, some people try to hinder them, they confront the bad guys at the end of the film- basically fairly standard blockbuster fare. It seemed director Michael Bay felt the need to continue his trend of making films that might have been better, if only they didn’t go on so long. While not as serious an offender as Pearl Harbor, this movie is also slightly guilty, and there were really too many scenes with gunfire and explosions for me to suspend my disbelief-it was in fact during these scenes that I had time to ponder some of the more obvious plot holes, like the fact that the whole living clones thing was so hush-hush that the clones must be contained at all costs, yet everyone from the receptionist to the mechanics to the delivery guys knew all about it and yet none of them ever consider the moral implications or the money to be had from going to the press. Or the scene where a clone mother gives birth to a baby, then is killed before the baby is handed over to the real life parents-you would think that if the woman was so concerned about the pain or distorted body that comes with child birth, she would at least be an easy up sale to the new skin that others grow whole clones to get, and if she isn’t, I failed to see why they couldn’t just tell the mother the baby died/was contaminated and keep her just in case her organs were needed. But this is clearly besides the point, as if you have the technology to grow clones of any age, why not just combine the DNA and grow a 3 year old-most of the dirty work or raising the child has been done by now and kids don’t have many memories before three anyway. While the film gave me plenty of unengaged time to think these thoughts, it wasn’t this aspect of the story that I found to be most disturbing. It was the whole world and the attitudes of the people in it that that disturbed me the most, and here is why. The film is set in 2019, and from what we see, it is possible to find two people using facial recognition in a city the size of L.A. 2019 in a matter of seconds. Yet once the mercenaries find them, and destroy many, many cars, helicopters, weird flying things that sound exactly like pod-racers from Star Wars, not to mention buildings, in their attempt to quietly contain the clones so that no one ever finds out that the company uses live people to grow the organs they sell. The clones actually get arrested at one point and run through the system, yet later when they turn up at Lincolns owner’s house, it appears that the police have completely forgotten that he was obviously involved in what could be described as a destructive event in excess of recent terrorist actions. But despite this oversight, the police are highly active and efficient, easily link the two to an out of state killing that happened less than a couple of hours ago then find them using the ubiquitous invasive public surveillance system, and it seems that technology has caught up with the zeal of post-patriot act America. I couldn’t help but find this a little disturbing, not because it was a theme of the movie, but precisely because it wasn’t an important theme, it was just an assumed premise- like, if we want to make a movie in the future, it is now just assumed that we will give up privacy in exchange for a veil of safety that the movie shows to be thin indeed. Overall, I enjoyed the movie, and felt it to be generally a mainstream rehash of some of the more obscure sci-fi out there. I must admit that despite my general dislike of Michael Bay, he does do some things just right- the sound of a monkey wrench hitting a guy across the face, the little scenes where humour was interchanged with the action, but I felt that in this case, his action heavy style resulted in too much of a good thing, and many a scene could be cut to help the pacing of the movie. While the movie rehashed many of the events and themes of Logan’s Run and THX-1138, what disturbed me was some of the subtlety that was lost in translation, while the heroes may triumph in the end, they do not go on to confront the society that could make a corporation so powerful that it could keep such a huge secret despite destroying a part of a city, yet have so little privacy for the individual that they are watched everywhere they go in public, and feel it futile to even attempt to challenge the status quo, despite being confronted with the gruesome truth behind the secret of everlasting life.
Video
Presented in the film’s original theatrical ratio of 2.40:1 this anamorphic widescreen image is brilliant. The image is sharp and the level of detail is high, the colours are over saturated to give a heightened sense of the artificial. The colours accurately represent the film’s tone and are rendered well, blacks are deep and bold, shadow detail is excellent especially during interior scenes. The transfer does exhibit minor edge-enhancement which is a bit of a bother, considering Warner Brothers have had a good reputation in the last year in releasing films with solid near perfect transfers.
Audio
Two audio tracks are included on this release, both of which are Dolby Digital 5.1 surround tracks. They are in English and Thai, for the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its English soundtrack and boy was I impressed. Aside from the fact that the dialogue is clear this track is humming with activity, environmental surrounds makes subtle use of the sound space making it easy for the viewer to immerse themselves into the world the filmmakers have created, the music is well rendered and mixed at a level that is never overbearing the dialogue or the action. Which is were this track will blow you away, the action scenes are full to the brim with directional activity, gun shots, explosions, car chases, crashes, helicopters, you name it they’ve thrown it in. Your speakers will literally explode and the only way to watch this movie is with the volume turned right up. Nice job Warner Brothers, the only thing that can improve over the Dolby Digital track would be a full bit rate DTS one. Optional subtitles are also included in English, Korean, Thai and Bahasa Indonesian.
Extras
First up we’ve got the Making of The Island featurette which runs for 14 minutes 54 seconds, Although there is a fair amount of back-patting this is not your average EPK. The piece mainly focuses on the film’s impressive production design of the main center of the subterranean world which is one giant set, the birthing room, as well as the implanted memory room (also a large set in its own right). The action set pieces of the film are also briefly touched on, setting the pace of the shoot and working with director Michael Bay who likes to shoot right near to the action, putting cameras dangerously close. This featurette includes optional subtitles in English, Korean, Thai and Bahasa Indonesian. Rounding out the disc’s extras is some DVD-ROM content that links you to the film’s web site as well as Warner Brother’s web links. PRE-ORDER BONUS DISC For those that pre-ordered the DVD, Warner Brother’s offered a free bonus disc that includes an additional featurette. The disc is housed in a cardboard case. The disc has no menu, so when you put it into your player the featurette plays automatically. The featurette is entitled Future in Action and is the same extra content as seen on the R1 US release of the DVD. The piece runs for 15 minutes 36 seconds and is yet another EPK style featurette that takes a closer look at the action in this film. Primarily focusing on the highway chase scene and the R logo falling from the side of a high-rise building scene, we get some interview clips with principle cast and crew as well as some behind-the-scenes footage on how these action scenes where filmed, and the help of special effect. This featurette includes optional subtitles in Korean only.
Overall
A lot of my enjoyment of this film came from its comparison to others in the genre, so this should really be considered a maximal score-without this, I fear I would have been easily bored by this blockbuster, and not been as kind. Warner Brothers have included a splendid Transfer and audio track however have decided to include the minimum amount of extras, at least customers that pre-ordered this DVD managed to get the bonus featurette as seen on the R1 release but the omission of the audio commentary is a large oversight.
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