well, with some reservations i sought this film The Island out, and we watched it last night.after a somewhat confusing, ill-defined opening twenty minutes or so, the film settled down to what it would seem it is intended to be - a "kind of" reversal of Blade Runner. i say "kind of" as it fails somewhat to do this. it strips the emotional side away from what would be the 'Deckard' side of the story, focusing exclusively on the 'Replicant', or in this case clones, end of it all. and therein lies a problem - if one side is under explored, what exactly is the point in trying to understand what happened in the other?
in Blade Runner the creations were given memories to develop them and have them function better. in The Island they are merely given a mass hallucination, and when they all of a sudden develop something along the lines of memories that they did not themselves experience, it's pretty much just stated as such and then brushed aside.
overall, The Island has a pretty interesting premise, but, much like something like AI, the story has absolutely nowhere coherent to go and so messes about until it hits a very open ended, almost i, Robot type finale. if nothing else, it at least shows that practically anything Ewan McGregor is in is pretty much watchable. if the option presents itself, though, go watch Blade Runner again instead.
on the note of young Ewan, i seem to have picked up a couple of his films lately. i have Big Fish (excellent) and Young Adam (not seen - looks heavy) sat on the shelf waiting to be watched of re-watched.
also sat on the shelf is, at last, Chaplin, Robert Downey jnr's greatest single performance. thanks Mrs R - looking forward to seeing it again.
oh well, other than Ian Brown's greatest expected to arrive today, not much else to report on!
have a good one......
No comments:
Post a Comment