The Island..3 stars

I saw The Island last night, Mike bay's new flick. One thing you can say about bay is that he is consistent. He gives you what he advertises, action , action, action.

Now this movie owes much to Logan's Run, the cheesy 70's flick starring Michael York. I enjoyed that film as well, saw it when it came out in it's intial theatrical release and it's a guilty pleasure I watched again in the last six months on cable, a fun fantasy trip like the origional Planet of the Apes movies. And Bay takes a stab a bit at reality TV too. I think the film is shot great/edited/lit well, and the production design is good too.

The movie is pretty good over all and I was entertained, but like most movies the 3rd act is the weakest and hurts the film. My pal Jamar was spot on with his comment that the last scenes with the clones exiting the facility in their white jumpers , out into the desert looked like a "I want to teach the world to sing" Coke Commercial, camera endlessly spinning, spinning, spinning. You could hear a audible "what the f..." and laughter from many in the audience. Not good for you as a movie maker when this happens.

There is good humor and lots of fun eye candy, impossible action, sun streaked dusty sets and locations, high contrast film shots. Bay always gives you good, well staged action, something that was clearly lacking in recent action fests such as Batman. Good performances by all the cast, Ewan Mcgregor, Scarlett Johansson, Sean bean, Djimon Hounsou and the ever enjoyable Steve Buscemi who seemed to have fun. There are no plot twists really, it all seems pretty straight forward, but you now sometimes a well carfted, mostly predictable and told fun candy-action story is OK if you just want a nite out of the house at a movie. If I could have rewritten the last 20 minutes of the film, fixed that it would go from a 3 star to a 4 star easily. The weakest part of the film was actually the soundtrack. It sounded like it was made up of left over tracks from Pearl Harbor, it droned on way too much, very sad sounding and to my taste not approprite.

If you can't see this movie at a matinee, it will be a good renter.