The Island Movie Review

Director Michael Bay is notorious for making movies with lots of high intensity action and tons of special effects. Not all of his movies are good; in fact some are just flat out stupid. Even when the movie is ridiculous and hard to take seriously, it cannot be said that the action isn't awesome. Somehow I missed the release of The Island (2005). I've had several people recommend it to me in the past few weeks, so I made sure to see it. It's pretty interesting for a Michael Bay movie.

Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly Utopian, but contained, facility in the year 2019. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to "The Island," reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything is not what it appears to be. He makes a daring escape with a beautiful fellow resident named Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson). The two are relentlessly pursued by the facility's administrator, Dr. Bernard Merrick (Sean Bean), and his hired mercenaries. Lincoln and Jordan race to find help and protection in a world they know nothing about.

Surely you've seen a Michael Bay movie before. Transformers, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor probably come to mind. If you've seen these movies then you already know they are special effects intensive, feature lots of action, and an uncommonly high number of explosions. That's basically the main reasons to watch a Michael Bay movie. The man is a genius when it comes to orchestrating beautiful pyrotechnic stunts.

In The Island, however, it's almost like he's done a double feature of some sort. The first part of the movie is similar to the "escape from paradise" movies that were popular in the 1960's and 70's, like Logan's Run or Fahrenheit 451. It acts as a creepy, yet relatively calm, science fiction parable, which later shifts into a high-tech adrenaline-pumping action movie. The second half is more like a Michael Bay movie. Both "halves" of the movie are great fun individually, but they contrast each other so much in terms of pacing, theme, and tone that I'm not sure if they work well together. It's almost like watching a double feature with the same cast.

The Utopian facility at the beginning of the movie is not terribly complicated to figure out. The inhabitants are childlike and blissful, all except for the few troublesome characters like Lincoln who wants bacon for breakfast but is given oatmeal. This causes him develop something that all closed systems fear, curiosity. McGregor and Johansson do a phenomenal job of playing characters raised to be docile, obedient, and frankly not very bright. It's great to see how Bay gradually thrusts upon them carefully controlled amounts of knowledge which both moves the plot forward and shows the characters losing their illusions.

The second part of the movie is an insane series of chase scenes by train, car, and hover-cycle, that showcase some stellar special effects with absurd urgency. How our heroes discover the underlying truth about their world while moving so fast is beyond me. Maybe people in the facility aren't as slow witted as we thought. Car chases on highways are difficult to film, but Michael Bay has a knack for filming great chase scenes. There are a good number of crashes, explosions, and cliffhangers which by every right should have killed everyone involved. Yet our heroes escape and keep going. How? I have no idea. But it was really fun and exciting to watch!

I didn't feel like The Island draws much of a conclusive ending. The climax of the film certainly fulfills the requirements of the second half of the story, but it leaves questions raised in the first half unanswered. We get a satisfactory ending to all the action, but it's as if the movie completely forgot about the first half. That's part of the reason why I think each half of the movie is good, but they don't quite work well together.

The Island is a fun movie. It's got lots of crazy action, some good acting, reasonably decent writing, good directing, and a story that is as illogical and full of plot holes as any other Michael Bay movie. If you're looking for something deep and intellectually stimulating, you shouldn't bother with a Michael Bay movie. The Island was fun and exciting. That's all it is, and that's what Michael Bay is good at. Like any good sci-fi movie, The Island should cause you to reflect on contemporary issues. If you don't think of something like stem-cell research or government monitoring, you might be missing one of the few intellectually stimulating bits of The Island. I recommend seeing this movie; it's not a classic for the ages, but it's achieves what it sets out to do. I think it might even be worth owning a copy for the next time you're in the mood for a crazy action movie.

What's your favorite "escape from paradise" movie? I kind of liked Logan's Run. Comment below and tell me about yours!

Enthiran Movie Review

A couple of years ago I saw a YouTube video about some crazy action scenes from a movie made in India. Several segments looked like they were trying to imitate visual effects from a number of big budget American movies. Recently I found the movie where these clips were from. It seems to have two titles depending on the language version; Enthiran (2010) if the language is Tamil or Robot when it is in Hindi.

Dr. Vasi (Rajnikanth) invents a super-powerful robot in his own image named Chitti (also played by Rajnikanth). The Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Institute (AIRD), the scientific body that must approve the robot, declines it based on its not having emotions and the ability to make rational judgment. A spontaneous bolt of lightning that hits Chitti evokes emotions in the robot, and he is seemingly ready for integration into the human world. But Chitti falls in love with Dr. Vasi's fiancée, Sana (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), and turns on his creator. Vasi's mentor, Dr. Bohra (Danny Denzongpa), has been trying for years to construct a functional robot for military purposes. After Vasi's success with Chitti, Bohra seeks out Chitti to turn him into a killing machine.

  Before I get into the review, I have to make a disclaimer. I'm not well-versed in Indian cinema; I don't think I've seen an entire Bollywood movie before Enthiran. I also don't speak Tamil, so I had to watch a subtitled copy of Enthiran and it didn't display the most nuanced grasp of the English language. I therefore don't feel like I have grounds to criticize the dialogue as I'm sure things have been lost in translation.

Enthiran is more than a wacky viral video, it's the most expensive and highest grossing film in Indian history. This is like the Avatar of Indian Cinema. There are tons of practical special effects and CGI animation, the likes of which have not been seen in Indian cinema before. Enthiran has a star-studded cast; Rajnikanth is often billed in his movies as "SUPERSTAR Rajni," and is the second highest paid actor in Asia after Jackie Chan. Aishwarya Rai is a former Miss India and Miss World pageant winner, and is often credited to be "most beautiful woman in the world." Enthiran is a big deal, yet Western audiences will primarily be familiar with it through a 10-minute YouTube clip that they chuckled at and forgot about.

The CGI and special effects are impressive on the one hand, but still looks a bit like the quality of CGI work that appears in a direct to DVD movie here in the United States. They also seem to try to mimic some American movie effects. Before his "skin" is put on, Chitti resembles the robots in I, Robot. There are dozens of identical robots swarming in attack similar to Agent Smith in The Matrix Reloaded. There's an exciting train fight scene similar to the one in Spider-Man 2. Chitti gets shot in the eye, imitating Schwarzenegger's iconic Terminator look. There's some subtle nods to The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man effects, and even a big Transformers type giant robot attack. These are the types of over-the-top action scenes that were showcased in the YouTube video, but I can assure you that seeing Enthiran in its entirety gives it a lot more context and credibility within its world setting. If nothing else, seeing the whole movie will give you some more CGI craziness to enjoy.

There's going to be a lot of cultural gaps between Indian and American cinema that's going to give Western viewers a sense of scurrility when watching Enthiran. The movie focuses a whole lot in the chaste romance between Vasi and Sana. It was almost weird seeing such chastity between romantic partners in a big movie like this; even the villain was intent on marrying Sana before daring to have sex with her. There's a scene where Chitti rescues a young woman from a burning building. She's naked from taking a bath and her body is blurred out. For some reason having your life saved while not fully dressed is deeply shameful. I didn't understand that; yeah, I'd rather have clothes on, but I'd be more concerned about dying. It's just an example of cultural gaps that didn't quite make sense to me.

Another part of Enthiran that I thought was surreal was the periodic music video breaks. When I was in theater we did a Broadway musical once and had an Indian man in the audience. He thought it was unusual to have the characters break into song while remaining in character. He explained to us that in Indian theater (and I have to assume movies by extension) the actors go out of character to sing, get back into character, and continue with the story. There were about three or four points during Enthiran where the story simply stops and suddenly Rajinikanth and Rai are in a completely different location  and they are dancing and singing about love and romance. That scene ends and we return to the story. They act like music video segues but the songs are only loosely related to what's happening in the story. They drag on for at least five minutes and really disrupt the pacing of the movie. They are really neat to watch, though; they feature beautiful cinematography, sets, and music. I have yet to hear contemporary Indian music that I don't enjoy.

Enthiran is a very long movie, about three hours. This is pretty normal for Indian movies, but if you don't take a break and pause during the intermission, your butt will be asleep well before the end credits. There is so much crammed into Enthiran that chances are you will find something to enjoy, be it the glitzy music videos, the over the top action, special effects, or the out of sorts Three Stooges-style slapstick humor. There's certainly some weird scenes, like when Chitti has a conversation with a mosquito, and the movie sets itself up for sarcastic quips and riffing. If you don't particularly enjoy foreign films, I'd stay away from this one. It's lengthy, somewhat demanding (in keeping up with subtitles), and has a modest pay-off. If you do enjoy Bollywood films, elaborate costumes and dance numbers, killer robots, and physical humor gags, Enthiran is something not to be missed.

Here's the YouTube clip so you can see some of the over the top action sequences:

What's the strangest foreign film you've ever seen? Was it still good? Comment below and tell me all about it!