..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
Island Getaway
What starts out as a ludicrously dismissible Logan's Run-type story about people living in a futuristically controlled environment, Michael Bay's The Island, becomes a great deal more entertaining once two of the characters, played by Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, decide to break out of the place. There is even a plot turn at that point that excuses at least some of the film's apparent stupidity. The only problem is that you have to wait a good 40 minutes or so to reach that point, but once you get there, the film turns into one of those typically rousing Bay thrillers, with spectacular chases (he kind of lifts what he did in Bad Boys II, but no matter) and grand stunts, the emotions of the story being more than enough to justify the mayhem.DreamWorks Home Entertainment has released The Island (91970, $30) in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks fine. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound does not have quite the revved up sound mix one would hope for given the apparent expense of the action scenes, but the mix is workable and you'll certainly want to turn things up. The 136-minute feature has optional English, French and Spanish subtitles, and a decent 15-minute production documentary that emphasizes the staging of the best chase sequences and crashes.
Bay supplies a commentary track, and while his use of the 'F word' gets bleeped, all of his other off-color phrasings sail right through. He describes the basics of the production, and also attempts to justify his choices. "There are people who think that some of the product [placement] in this movie, that we were whoring out the movie and we were making the commercial. Now let's face it guys, the world is focused on products. Products surround us and for us to think in the year 2019 we're not still going to be focused and have products and labels, flying at us from every different vantage point, is just unreal, it's not a true world. So that's my statement for people who have given me a hard time for thinking I'm just trying to whore out the movie and just make a big advertisement." Of course, he ignores the fact that the advertisements that surround us in the real world are randomly placed, whereas the products appearing in the film are presented with a deliberate emphasis of design. But then, Bay has a rather self-oriented view of the world around him. "Ewan just has a lot of stuff going on behind his eyes. What you haven't seen a lot of stuff Ewan do is action, so that was going to be my challenge, to try and make [him] into a semi-action hero." Uh, then who was that in those three Star Wars movies we saw?
But even Bay couldn't ignore the film's box office returns, taking them on with the same dinosaur-like attitude he approaches everything else. "So let's talk. The Island opened to the lowest opening in my career. All my movies have been smash hits. They've all made a fortune at the boxoffice, for what they cost, and The Island did a pitiful $35 million. Many reasons for that. One, a very big summer. Two, 'The Island,' just the title itself, a very complicated title, it's something that's very hard to market, because instantly you're thinking something that it's not. When you're watching the movie, it's a very appropriate title, but the marketing was the hugest challenge with this movie and we never nailed it. We never did. Warner Bros. did the foreign [markets] for this movie and they did very well. It was number one in France. In Korea, believe it or not, it's one of the top ten highest grossing movies of all time. It's phenomenal. I think that's because Korea's so tied into cloning. Our marketing campaign was so all over the place that it had no campaign. We should have sold it more as an action movie, but we started off trying to show it as intriguing. I am to blame, because yes, I did like some of the commercials, but what I felt more familiar with, is, I kept saying to DreamWorks marketing, which did the domestic release of The Island, I said, 'We should use the Warner campaign.' I said it repeatedly, repeatedly and repeatedly. It's more of the 'Michael Bay action movie' and it made it more familiar to people, what they were getting. We tried to be too smart and too intelligent. It just never resonated with people. I'm still very proud of the movie and I think the marketing made it a missed opportunity. When you add up what we've made domestically and foreign and DVDs, the movie's going to break even and it will make some money, so it's not a disaster it was painted in the press."
January 25, 2006
DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
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