Review of The Island (1980) by Ken S — 16 Dec 2010

It takes a good hour for this movie to finally reveal it's true colors as the 70's era Michael Caine fighting 18th century pirates movie that it is.

And I'm sorry to report that it isn't nearly as cool as it sounds, mainly because Ritchie clearly can't direct traffic, let alone the action sequences in this film. Almost everyone of them is plagued with bad under-cranking (thats sped up action for those of you playing at home.) And while the film tries to walk the fine line of surreality, it constant plummets off the cliffs on silliness.

In one of the earlier scenes in the movie, Michal Caine is guilt-ed into buying his son a handgun, by his son. If you feel thats a slightly odd thing to happen, well then you are in for a treat. Because the strangeness keeps on keeping on.

There a couple of cool scenes. The William Tell-esque scene is fun, the storming of a yuppie yacht is pretty cool too. But instead of concentrating on the awesomeness of Caine fighting pirates, it instead concentrates on Caine's son becoming a pirate. the picture ends up feeling like a tarted up version of Hook with a bit of nudity.

That said, I must repeat. Michael Caine fights pirates (for about 30 minutes).