Sadistic and Depressing
For those critics who think that today's movies are the worst representatives of drek, they have forgotten the 70's and 80s.SPOILERS AHEAD:(but how can you spoil something that is already rotting?)
The Island is an almost plotless story of an unfortunate tourist (Caine) discovering an island full of psychopaths who have an I.Q. of about 30 but yet manage to kill everyone they come across, including a highly trained ship of Coast Guard crewmen.
The movie simply exists to demonstrate a long series of pointless and sadistic acts agains helpless victims.There is even a scene where a newborn baby is drowned in liquor, and then put in a bag and cut open so its blood can be drunk.This is touted as a "pirate tradition" by Warner but I doubt the writer did any more research into pirate tradition than his nearest cocaine tray.
Another charming scene has a woman member of this tribe trying to help Caine escape, and she is caught and tortured graphically in the nude after her clothes are torn off, by having a jellyfish held over her naked body so it stings her; so the audience gets the thrill of watching a naked woman slowly being tortured.
There is also another sadistic scene where a sleeping women is crept up on by a psycho pirate and her throat is cut so cleanly that when she wakes up her throat is already cut.This scene is shot so lovingly that the filmmakers seem to want the audience to appreciate the art with which these characters kill, but comes across as if the audience had wandered into a snuff film and was expected to appreciate it.Scenes like this aren't just in bad taste. They're perverted; the only time I have ever used this word in a review, but it applies.The movie leaves the viewer depressed, sickened, and feeling as if he has been sized up to appreciate two hours of pointless sadism.If there is a comment it makes (unintentionally), it seems to be the producers' attitude of what the American public wants to watch.At the end, Caine kills the entire tribe of psycho pirates with a machine gun on the Coast Guard ship, a strange feat considering the psychos have been unstoppable throughout the film, which illustrates the depth of logic of this movie.
The movie is an exercise in sadism, with nothing to recommend it.I wonder what Caine was thinking, or how his career was going?David Warner also should have had better taste than this.It deserves to be in the trashcan, along with the people who wrote and produced it.
Zero stars.
score /10
mercuryix 8 March 2003
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0177346/35619
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