The Island

This film is brought to you by Puma, Calvin Klein, Nokia, Tag Heuer, Ben & Jerry’s, Xbox, and the V12 car. After years of famously ‘f*cking the frame’, this was the movie where Michael Bay finally got round to screwing the audience.

Really: it’s just one big advert. I remember years ago, Back to the Future 3 got loads of stick for all those Pepsi and Nike signs swooshing across the screen. More recently, Will Smith in I, Robot couldn’t get through three scenes without telling someone how cool his vintage Converse trainers where.

(You see, it was all about his ‘character’ being quirky for buying the footwear, and not at all about the ‘money’ Converse paid for the product placement.) Still, such tomfoolery is old school compared with The Island (2005).

Scene after scene is hand-crafted to show off the film’s sponsors. Here’s Steve Buscemi holding his Michelob beer unnaturally high. There’s Ewan MacGregor in a phone booth, half-obscured by a big MSN logo.

Hilariously, one scene simply opens on the hood of a Mack truck, stays there for a milli-second, then swings sideways to get on with the action. By the time a real, actual perfume advert starring Scarlet Johnannsen – which was all over the telly at the time – is judderingly ‘weaved’ into the storyline and shown in full glory on widescreen, you’re pretty much in through-the-looking-glass territory.

Still, among all the ads, they do gamely manage to squeeze in a plot. Thousands of people live in an underground complex-cum-prison, believing they’re the sole survivors from a global disease – but actually they’re just clones of rich people, kept alive in case the originals ever need a new body part. Surprisingly, given these people are essentially talking livestock with no concept of money or commerce, they’re clad from head to foot in designer Puma gear.

Soon Ewan and Scarlett escape to a very-much futuristic New York, where their survival strategy seems to revolve around looking worried in front of lots of advertising billboards featuring very-much contemporary brands.

Ewan McGregor, a past-master of poor career decisions, looks palpably distressed to be on screen among this nonsense. Look closely and you can almost see it in his eyes: ‘Christ, first Phantom Menace and now this..?’

It doesn’t help that he also has to play the ‘human’ version of himself as a rich, cocky Scottish git who’s into motorbikes. (Oh, the post-modern irony!) Hilariously, ‘real’ Ewan wears glasses – obviously, so the audience can tell them apart more easily. But hang on: he’s paid $5 million for a clone with twenty/twenty vision and he’s walking round in glasses?

Following stints in Troy and Silent Hill, Sean Bean once again proves that no imaginative world – no matter how mythical or dystopian – need necessarily preclude a thick Sheffield accent. It’s grim up t’future.

Set against all this bunkum, a mere helicopter explosion inevitably pales. In fact, had Bay formed a hundred real, full-sized helicopters in a giant aerial circle, then sent them all accelerating to the dead centre at top speed, the resulting fireball-to-end-all-fireballs could not be more spectacular than the shamefacedness with which he forces his brands down the gullet of the viewer. You feel like human foie gras by the end.



Artistic merit

I’m sorry, did you say ‘artistic merit’? Very perfunctory. The chopper pilot swings slowly round the side of a skyscraper just as a giant metal sign comes away from it, and says something like: ‘Oh-no-the-sign-is-coming-off-the-building-and-looks-like-it’s-going-to-hit-us’ instead of just moving out the way.

After the crash happens – the giant sign, our heroes and the exploding ‘copter all go hurtling to earth together – Bay starts humping the frame so vigorously that it’s anyone’s guess what’s going on. I rewound six times and all I could ascertain was that a crap CGI ball of chopper-shaped flame seemed to be falling.

Do the passengers survive?

Ewan and Scarlett do, natch. For some reason, there’s a giant trapeze net attached to the building about 20 feet up that our plucky couple land in and which the chopper somehow misses by a mile. Don’t question why: just be thankful the net wasn’t branded by Cola or something.

Positives

Weirdly, the product placement. After a while, you give up on any pretence that you’re actually watching a film and just start playing ‘spot the ads’. Much more fun.

Negatives

Djimon Hounsou’s ex-special forces hit squad prove repeatedly unable to hit a barn door at ten paces. Really, this elite team could spend all day at a fairground shoot-the-ducks gallery and not win a single goldfish.

Just before the chopper explosion, our heroes are stuck fast between the inside of a giant sign and a skyscraper. Stood forty feet above them, two mercs unleash such a barrage of relentless artillery from their machine guns that the iron-secured sign actually comes off the building. And yet they miss the two gawping moppets directly below them. Just rubbish.

Favourite quote

Steve Buscemi: “Just cos people want to eat the burger, doesn’t mean they want to meet the cow.”

Interesting fact

My mate was a storyboard artist on a Michael Bay film and said he was every bit as pleasant as you'd expect him to be.

Review by: Chopper

Escape From LA

Escape From LA (1996) has got a pretty bad reputation amongst John Carpenter fans.

But you know what? Fans are sometimes the worst judges. They can have impossible expectations, impose creative straightjackets, and overreact to anything which differs from their own preconceived ideas.

Waiting 16 years to make the sequel to the classic Escape From New York (1981) probably didn’t help. Making the job of overcoming the accumulated expectation all the harder. But judged in it’s own merits Escape From LA is a good film.

Carpenter has on one level remade Escape From New York but at the same time made a completely different film. While the first was a simple action film set in a dystopian future, this sequel attempts to combine action with social satire.

We’re presented with a grossly exaggerated, gonzoid, comic book LA, but one rooted in the reality of the city and America as whole. Politics, religion, plastic surgery, capital punishment, the environment, the list of targets the film takes pot shots at is lengthy. It’s unsubtle, over the top, but it’s a subversive vision of America that you don’t often see in mainstream movies.

Sure there are flaws. Some of the editing is shocking, in one scene Valerie Golino is simply cut off half way through a sentence. And the special effects leave a lot to be desired. But they have a certain cartoon-ish quality which fits in with the tone of the film.

You can see this in, what we at this website certainly consider to be, the films key scene: the helicopter explosion.

The films villain and de facto ruler of LA Cuevo Jones (Georges Corraface) has blackmailed the authorities into sending a helicopter into LA in which he intends to escape the prison.

Russell though hijacks the chopper to make his own getaway. Seeing his plans about to be foiled Jones fires a rocket launcher at the helicopter. Badly damaged the chopper flies on trailing flames and smoke.

Unable to land the chopper safely Russell bails out at the last moment.  The chopper crashes into the ground and explodes in a massive fireball.



Artistic merit

As I’ve already mentioned the special effects aren’t this film’s strongest quality. The entire helicopter sequence has very obviously been done using miniatures, a decidedly old school specials effects method.

Whether this was an artistic decision or for budget reasons is hard to know. It’s further complicated by the fact a building in the background of the scene has a big sign on it saying “Miniatures”.

The effects used to create the “fire” onboard the helicopter are ridiculous. They’ve clearly been superimposed with little effort to make it look real. It looks like someone’s napalming a tree line in the back of the helicopter yet Russell’s mullet is not so much as singed by the conflagration behind him.

The helicopter’s final seconds of descent are embarrassing. It’s as if someone is pushing the chopper across the screen with their finger. But when it finally crashes the fireball which erupts looks like genuine pyrotechnics. Nor does it look like any expense was spared here as the fireball is huge, dark blood orange in colour, smeared with sooty blacks. It’s very good.

Exploding helicopter innovation

After the helicopter first lands the rotor blades retract into the chassis. Quite what advantage this lends is never clear. Regardless, it becomes the first known destruction of a helicopter with retractable rotor blades.

It could also be the earliest example of someone escaping a chopper fireball by jumping clear of a helicopter whilst its in flight. The only other example I can think of this is in Die Hard 4.0 where a sniper jumps clear moments before his chopper is destroyed by a flying car.

Do passengers survive?

Three survive and five die in a quite complicated set of circumstances.

To make his escape Russell teams up with a rag tag collection of LA residents, including Steve Buscemi, Pam Grier, and some of her gang. Whilst shooting Cuevo Jones henchman from the helicopter, Grier is shot and killed. When Jones goes to fire the rocket launcher Buscemi fearing a fiery doom leaps clear of the helicopter landing safely after falling on to a shop canopy.

Four passengers sat in the back of the helicopter all die in a burst of flame which sweeps across the back of the cabin. Inexplicably the flames are isolated in the back of the helicopter and don’t harm Russell or Utopia, the president’s daughter who’s also on board.

After flying out of LA Utopia and Russell both jump clear of the crippled chopper moments before it crashes and explodes.

Positives

There’s a brief appearance by perennial bit part player Al Leong as one of Pam Grier gang members. Leong’s put in memorable micro-performances in classic actions films like Lethal Weapon, Big Trouble In Little China, Death Warrant, Beverly Hills Cop III, the list goes on.

Perhaps my favourite Al moment is when he sneakily steals a chocolate bar in Die Hard. Here, he puts in one of his stock non-speaking roles. If when he doesn’t do anything special its just nice to see him on screen.

Negatives

The quality of the special effects was widely knocked when this film was released. It probably didn’t help that the “envelop pushing” Independence Day came out in the same year.

Favourite quote

Plissken: “Sad story. You gotta smoke?”

Interesting fact

The film was apparently in the pipeline for over 10 years. A script was commissioned as far back as 1985, however, Carpenter sat on it as he felt it was too ‘light and campy’. Given the end product it’d be interested to know different the final film was from the original draft.

Escape From LA is also unusual as Carpenter made his name making clever remakes Assault On Precinct 13 an updating of Rio Bravo, and The Thing an updating of its namesake The Thing From Another World. This film then is oddly John Carpenter remaking himself.

Review by: Jafo

You want more don't you? Then why not check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Escape From LA. Listen on iTunes, Acast, Stitcher, Podomatic, or YourListen. Or right here...