Purely Joyful Movie!

Best movie ever!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I saw only the last two thirds of this clunker and it was enough. How Michael Caine could be associated with this film is hard to understand. The only memorable scene shows him mowing down all the pirates with the machine gun, thereby obtaining revenge for the massacre of the Coast Guard crew. Finally, he burns up David Warner with a flare pistol which anybody would guess would happen. David Warner works at playing a bad guy, but was much better at it in TITANIC. Caine and Warner are passable, but the plot, the direction, the other actors and action, aren't worth discussing. The more I think about it, I feel I over rated the movie.

Island, The (1980) ** (out of 4) Peter Benchley (JAWS) adapted his own novel for this notorious dud that thirty-years after its release still doesn't make any sense. Michael Caine plays a big-shot NYC writer who grows curious as to why over three-hundred ships a year go missing in the Caribbean each year. He takes his young son down there and soon learns that an evil group of Spanish pirates are behind all the missing ships and soon the writers finds himself held hostage by the leader (David Warner) who wants him to impregnate one of the female pirates. The leader also plans to turn the writer's own son against him so that he can lead future clans. The poster for this adventure/horror flick is without question the best thing about the movie. This film is considered one of the worst ever made but I certainly wouldn't go that far. It's certainly a very bad movie but at the same time it features some stuff that is just so campy that you can't help but be somewhat entertained. As bad as the reputation is I think the worst thing about the film is that there's clearly a good movie somewhere here but sadly the screenplay by Benchley just comes off extremely bland and lifeless. For the life of me I can't figure out exactly what the writer was wanting to do because he gives us an interesting idea of pirates in today's culture but he does nothing with it. Caine and his son are kidnapped around the twenty-five minute mark and for the next hour Caine pretty much stays tied up with the exception of every once in a while he tries to escape. Just having him sit around for an hour just brings the film to a crashing halt and you can't help but wish that the writer had came up with something else. There are a few good moments here including the scene where Caine and his son are taken hostage. The opening attack scenes are extremely graphic and bloody but they're effective. There's even an attack in the middle of the film, which contains some campy moments but it too at least gives us something to look at. Even the subplot involving the son turning into a pirate is just downright silly and it's a shame so much time is wasted with this. Caine doesn't give much of a performance as he's clearly just picking up a paycheck. Warner isn't too bad but I thought the character was way too laid back for his own good. The rest of the cast members fit their roles nicely but none of them really jump off the screen. THE ISLAND will always be considered a notorious flop and it's a real shame because something much better could have been done with the setting and original idea. I'm not exactly sure what the writer was trying to do but he has pretty much delivered a rather bland movie but also a very frustrating one because you can see that there's something here but whatever greatness was possible is certainly never reached.

I watched this movie many, many years ago, and like all good movies it left an impression on me. I think about this movie from time to time and remember it bringing out many emotions in me, mostly fear. I would love to watch it again if I can ever find it available. I don't remember to much about it, but loved Michael Caine and felt he did an excellent job in his role. This is a modern day pirate story, that seems to be probably fairly close to reality. I did not read the book so I can't compare the two. I figure that the fact that the movie has left such an impact on me all these years later, gives the movie a positive rating. I wonder if I watched it now if I would still enjoy it?

Michael Caine is a reporter who goes to Florida with his young son, to investigate the disappearance of hundreds of ships over a three year period. While out fishing, they are captured by vicious pirates, who speak pidgin English, live by their own set of laws and have been eking out an existence by plundering ships for centuries. Caine's son is rather partial to this lifestyle, and one of the pirate women has an eye for making Caine her new husband. will Caine's son grow up to be the next Blackbeard, with Caine doomed (I guess) to being a pirate chick's sex slave? Or will Caine manage to rescue his son and get back to civilisation?The Island sounds totally silly, and yes, it IS totally silly, but on a plus side it has David Warner as the leader of the pirates, and Warner is awesome imho. It also comes with some nice scenery and has an effectively nasty and attention grabbing opening scene. As well as this, it's surprisingly gruey in parts with some decently and well executed bloody kills and a way OTT scene involving a heavy machine gun. There's some rather offbeat touches to The Island also, with some of the gory kills being played out to the score of swashbuckling matinée music, as the Pirates plunder ships, as well as a hilarious spot of impromptu and wholly unexpected Kung-Fu.So overall, it's a dumb but fun flick which reasonably delivers.6.5/10 worth checking out for some decent kills, and an overall offbeat enough set up.