The Island

THE ISLAND (2005) - July 13, 2005
Hmmm... This actually started out fairly well. The first forty-five minutes or so, with the clones living out their day-to-day lives inside the artificial community, and Ewan McGregor's character slowly realizing something is wrong, was entertaining and reasonably interesting. And even for a while after that it remained entertaining. But then, as if to make up for the relative lack of action in the first hour, Michael Bay cranks the action into super-mega-overdrive, thrusting the audience into one boring and incredibly long action sequence after another. The movie, at almost two and a half hours, was oppressively overlong. The problem essentially being that none of the action was particularly interesting or exciting. The worst offender was an insanely long car chase that seemed to be going for the record for most cars flipped over on the highway. It was pretty much the exact same car chase from Bad Boys 2, and just as bad. It was just so incredibly over-the-top, it was mind-numbing. Michael Bay seems to be operating under the assumption that seeing cars get destroyed is inherently exciting. It isn't; there needs to be something more, something other than an endless parade of chaos and explosions. This movie should have been around 90 minutes; everything from the last hour and a half could have easily been edited into half an hour (most of the action could be cut down quite a bit, and the car chase could be excised altogether, as it did nothing to move the plot forward and was only there so Bay could blow stuff up real good). It's too bad because the idea for the film is pretty good and I did enjoy the first hour or so. *1/2