Films featuring pirates didn't do well at the box office until the franchise starring Johnny Depp came along and THE ISLAND is no exception . It' s a film obviously produced because it had the name Peter Benchley attached to it , a writer whose name will forver be associated with JAWS . What possibly didn't appear so obvious at the time is that Benchley's career owes more to Steven Spielberg than it does to his own attempts to the world of litreature . His books all revolve around a danger from the sea whether it be a shark , a squid , a Nazi experiment gone wrong , sunken boats filled with opuim or in this case a colony of pirates
As premises go it's a totally ridulous idea that makes no sense . A British journalist is hired by a New York magazine to get to the bottom of the Bermuda triangle mystery . It's important that he's British because if there's a star used to sell the film no matter how bad it is then that can only mean one man nd that man is Michael Caine and like Sean Connery Caine is only capable of doing one accent
Caine admittedly isn't too bad in this . Okay he' wasn't an Oscar contender but he does treat the bizarre proceedings with a dead pan seriousness and his bitchy dialogue sounds more amusing the more serious he treats it . Interesting too that all the pirates are played by Brits though unlike Caine decide they're playing everything for laughs . You can't blame them because you know Caine would be starring in another dreadful film with a big pay cheque very soon where as the likes of , Middlemass , Sutton , Henderson and Jeavons have only got television to fall back on
One noticeable thing about THE ISLAND is that it contains a rather unsavoury subtext - that it's better to have a gun if you're being menaced by sword wielding maniacs .Caine's character states early on that " Guns don't kill people - people kill people " . In fact the main story proper is set up when Cine shoots one of the pirates which perhaps effectively saves him from being killed out of hand . Likewise various supporting characters with firearms are killed due to the fact that they can't get to their weapons in time and the plot is brought to a contrived ending where the villains just happen to be conveniently gathered in a line of fire
That said THE ISLAND is one of these movies that can be described as a guilty pleasure . It's absolute rubbish devoid of any sort of internal logic and is somewhat mean and nasty as well as being rather daft . Perhaps the reason it is so daft works in its favour ?
As premises go it's a totally ridulous idea that makes no sense . A British journalist is hired by a New York magazine to get to the bottom of the Bermuda triangle mystery . It's important that he's British because if there's a star used to sell the film no matter how bad it is then that can only mean one man nd that man is Michael Caine and like Sean Connery Caine is only capable of doing one accent
Caine admittedly isn't too bad in this . Okay he' wasn't an Oscar contender but he does treat the bizarre proceedings with a dead pan seriousness and his bitchy dialogue sounds more amusing the more serious he treats it . Interesting too that all the pirates are played by Brits though unlike Caine decide they're playing everything for laughs . You can't blame them because you know Caine would be starring in another dreadful film with a big pay cheque very soon where as the likes of , Middlemass , Sutton , Henderson and Jeavons have only got television to fall back on
One noticeable thing about THE ISLAND is that it contains a rather unsavoury subtext - that it's better to have a gun if you're being menaced by sword wielding maniacs .Caine's character states early on that " Guns don't kill people - people kill people " . In fact the main story proper is set up when Cine shoots one of the pirates which perhaps effectively saves him from being killed out of hand . Likewise various supporting characters with firearms are killed due to the fact that they can't get to their weapons in time and the plot is brought to a contrived ending where the villains just happen to be conveniently gathered in a line of fire
That said THE ISLAND is one of these movies that can be described as a guilty pleasure . It's absolute rubbish devoid of any sort of internal logic and is somewhat mean and nasty as well as being rather daft . Perhaps the reason it is so daft works in its favour ?