TODAY'S MOVIE REVIEWS: 'The Island' and 'Hustle & Flow'


Slightly longer "director's cuts" of reviews in today's Oregonian. Click on the title links for the print versions.




The Island
(dir. Michael Bay)

The sci-fi adventure "The Island" raises troubling philosophical questions that are currently dividing the nation, namely: Is Michael Bay a talented filmmaker or a hack?

Mr. Bay is, of course, the most successful and distinctive director (other than Tony Scott) to come out of Jerry Bruckheimer's over-the-top action factory. He's gifted us with "The Rock," "Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor," the "Bad Boys" pictures and this one camera move that swoops around a character while they're standing up. He's famous for pushing Eisenstein's montage theory well past the point of singularity -- editing his action scenes so rapidly that geography and coherence become, well, they just become sort of pesky.

Among film snobs, the easiest thing in the world is to dismiss Bay as a smirking frat-boy lobotomizing moviegoers one overedited, sun-dappled shot at a time. But may we dare to declare the man's work a "guilty pleasure"? May we note that his peculiar, idiot-Americana aesthetic is consistently applied? That he almost always gets funny performances out of grade-A supporting actors, especially Steve Buscemi? That he sets out to do nothing but create corny, violent, ludicrous, sentimental action fluff (and yes, this includes "Pearl Harbor")? And that, in fact, he's pretty damn good at it, as far as that sort of filmmaking goes?

All of which brings us back to "The Island" -- which manages to be simultaneously the best and worst film of Mr. Bay's career.

For its first third, it actually sets up an intriguing premise, as long as you don't sweat the details too hard: Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) is a jumpsuit-wearing inmate at a sort of fascist health spa that houses the last living humans after a global plague. The place is nothing so much as a wicked spoof of L.A. values -- people are forced to work out, drink Aquafina and veggie cocktails and suffer perpetual health screenings, and they're only educated to the level of a 15-year-old (perhaps not coincidentally, the age of the ideal Bay audience member). It's a big high school, basically, and periodically, a lottery is held to send a lucky inmate to "The Island … nature's last pathogen-free zone." It's like "THX 1138" by way of a Pilates class, and it's surprisingly sharply sketched.

But Lincoln also has a 15-year-old's rebellious streak, and he's plagued by nightmares so beautifully shot they might as well be Ban du Soleil ads. And so of course he coincidentally finds out that the lottery's not all it's cracked up to be, and flees the facility with the young woman he chastely adores (Scarlett Johansson).

I don't want to spoil the surprise -- even if the film's advertising campaign does it for me -- but suffice it to say that whereas many sci-fi filmmakers would follow the tradition of '70s lowbrow sci-fi and make revealing "The Island"'s secret the climax of the story, Bay uses it as an excuse to stage an hour's worth of cool chases with concept cars and jet cycles. He also drops blatant references to "Total Recall," "The Matrix," "Blade Runner," "Logan's Run," "Coma," "North by Northwest," classic "Star Trek" and even "Heat."

For about two-thirds of the film, this works beautifully. Bay has a knack for creating a sort of hilariously slick Rolex futurism -- why of course, in the future, with fuel undoubtedly overpriced and scarce, people will drive V12 Cadillacs and sail in gigantic, angular cigarette boats! A central chase with jet bikes, people falling off buildings and cars smashed and flipped by giant train axles is outrageously fun. And there's strong supporting work by Buscemi as "the guy who tells kids there's no Santa Claus" and Djimon Hounsou as the sleek, conflicted mercenary chasing McGregor and Johansson (although, after half an hour of blowing up half a city and yelling "Go go go!" at his underlings, it's inadvertently hilarious when Hounsou tells one of his thugs to "do this quietly.")

Unfortunately, in the final third, after Lincoln confronts his own darker self (after a fashion), "The Island" profoundly loses its footing. Our heroes return to their prison to confront their former keeper (Sean Bean), and it's idiotically overblown, ill-advised and anticlimactic, and gets the audience thinking about the story's empty profundity and loose ends -- including one pointless subplot about Lincoln's cellular memory, plus a conversation between Bean and Hounsou that dares to suggest that "The Island" is metaphorically exploring the ethics of stem-cell research. Uh, okay.

It's all finally too chaotic and silly to keep our disbelief suspended, and it undermines the not-entirely-dull satire of "The Island"'s first third and the hypercaffeinated fun of its middle.
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Hustle & Flow
(wr/dir. Craig Brewer)

The basic premise of "Hustle & Flow" isn't new: It's about a talented small-fry desperately shooting for his Big Break. In "Hustle"'s case, the underdog's a "dirt-rascal pimp" (Terrence Howard) who makes a rap demo tape, then tries to slip it to a visiting hip-hop superstar (Ludacris). It's the scaffold of a thousand far-fetched underdog stories -- everything from "Rocky" to "Breaking Away" to "Eight Mile" to, dear Lord, "Glitter."

But to borrow a well-worn cliché myself: It's all in the telling. Because when you factor in God's details -- the writing, acting and filmmaking -- "Hustle & Flow" adds up to something amazing.

Writer-director Craig Brewer's movie is electric. It's sweaty, unpretty and powerfully alive. It steps behind the hip-hop posturing and finds human beings "making music … by any means necessary." It has a lazy, character-driven '70s vibe. It's the best movie about songwriting since "DiG!" And it contains a absolute sledgehammer of a performance by Terence Howard.

Howard's a working actor with a few dozen roles behind him (including one in "Glitter," actually). And if there's any cinematic justice, "Hustle & Flow" will catapult him into the prestige ranks. His honey-tongued Memphis pimp, DJay, isn't a particularly nice man; in one rough scene, he throws one of his whores and her howling illegitimate son out of his house in the middle of the night. And he seethes with the resentment of a thirtysomething who's starting to see his future ossify in failure.

But he still nourishes a kernel of righteous creativity -- and three chance meetings transform his vague anger into a full-on midlife crisis.

He's hired to bring some premium weed to a private Fourth of July party for Skinny Black -- a big-name rapper who dropped rhymes at DJay's rival school a decade and change earlier. Then a street hustler gives DJay a vintage Casio keyboard. And DJay runs into a school buddy (Anthony Anderson) who now works as a church sound engineer.

After a transcendent moment in Anderson's church where DJay and his white-trash hooker (Taryn Manning) are moved to tears by a gospel singer, D wakes up and conscripts everyone and everything in his life -- Anderson, his house, even his prostitutes -- to a single cause: helping him make a demo tape he can tuck into Skinny's pocket.

One of the best things about "Hustle & Flow" is that it's one of the first movies about music to actually show, in its entirety, the long process of making a song. It's quietly thrilling -- even if you're not a rap fan, and I'm not -- to watch DJay and his ad hoc family unearth long-buried ambitions as they become partners in the pimp's crazy, tragic plan. It's especially joyful to watch Shug (Taraji P. Henson), an "employee" sidelined by pregnancy, find her voice as a backup singer. As DJay channels his anger into his (surprisingly excellent) rhymes, he achieves a sort of gorgeous, complicated nobility that makes his fateful meeting with Skinny an absolute nail-biter.

Brewer shoots his film with an eye to the '70s -- taking his time, letting scenes breathe, putting character before flash. Cinematographer Amy Vincent captures the sweltering heat in a way that recalls "Do the Right Thing," underscoring the film's broiling emotions. "Hustle & Flow" is being niche-marketed as a film about rap, but it's about something far more universal: waking up and finding salvation by telling your story. And buoyed by Howard's rude charm, it's one of the year's best films.

Enjoy 'Island,' feel guilty
A perfect 'Hustle'
(The Oregonian, July 22, 2005)



Posted: Fri - July 22, 2005 at 04:46 PM        

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