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July 21, 2005Movie Review: The Island
The Island is basically about a guy, Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor), who realizes that the life he has known isn’t at all what it seams. Turns out he is a clone or “product” that is harvested for parts living a controlled existence in a facility with the chance of what he thought was a ticket to freedom; a trip to live on “the Island”. He begins to questions his life and finds out everything he knows is very wrong. The reality of the movie however, is that I rate it a renter. I will say though it is a borderline renter because the special effects, action, and visuals were top notch and fun to see up on the big screen. The special effects and action sequences were the good parts and the bad parts. While they were spectacular and intense they also took up most of the movie. These sequences felt like your typical movie filler and took away from any story. I can see why since the movies story could have been brilliantly told in about 30 to 40 minutes as a simple twilight zone episode. An interesting aspect in this movie was its blatant product placement and realistic view of the near future. On the laptops and computer monitors you could clearly see the Apple Computers logo delivering the message in 14 years Apple ends up the top machine for the high processing needs of the scientific community. Another clever placement is in one scene, where the inhabitants of the facility were having recreation time, there was this small gaming arena that allowed them to fight holographically. It was believable to the point I can see this game existing in the future. The game playing environment was none other than Xbox. The Xbox logo was all over it. At one point they are looking for what was called an Information directory, instead of a phone book. These looked like round phone booths with computer screens in them. The information directory booths were powered by MSN Search, with the logo ad in clear view, implying that Microsoft won the information wars; sorry Google. Another thing you will notice is that apparently the Apple, Xbox, and MSN search logos in 14 years will be exactly the same as they are today. This product placement didn’t stand out too much because it was done in a more realistic manner similar to the movie Minority Report. Dreamworks Studios sure likes shove advertising in their movies. Overall I did enjoy myself; the action, special effects, and vision of the near future was realistic and well thought-out, but still the rating I give it is “Renter +”. Which means it’s a movie of rental quality but you should still enjoy seeing it on the big screen.
Copyright 2005 Aaron J. Young. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, and display unaltered copies of the work. In return, licensees must give the original author credit. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. Posted by AJY at July 21, 2005 04:40 PM Filed Under: Movies |
 Comments - Post a CommentI just have to say that movie was so amazing, I have seen it twice and I just won't be able to get enough of it , Thanks for making a great movie  Post a comment
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