Movie Reviews

When it comes to big-budget action movies, a complaint many people often make (myself included) is that good ideas are of little concern to the writers, so long as there are a sufficient number of sufficiently-spectacular explosions and car chases. Action movie plots are usually just clotheslines from which to hang special effects sequences and fight scenes. More often than not, that gets boring really fast, and I start wishing the film had more ideas (well, good ones, anyway).

Michael Bay's new big-budget summer blockbuster The Island got me thinking: Maybe I should be careful what I wish for. You see, The Island is a big, loud action movie, and it's got some really good ideas. The problem is that the ideas are so good, the action sequences -- as great as they themselves were -- got in the way of exploring those good ideas to the extent I was hoping for. In a certain way, a half-explored set of good ideas seemed more frustrating than no good ideas at all.

Still, The Island definitely stands above many other action movies. But as far as action movies and great plots go, I guess you can't really have it both ways.