Film Review – The Island (2023)

There’s some hope at the beginning of “The Island” that director Shaun Paul Piccinino (“A California Christmas,” “Holiday Harmony,” “A California Christmas: City Light”) will understand the filmmaking assignment ahead of him, working with screenwriters Michael Caissie and Philippe Martinez (“Christmas in Paradise,” “Christmas in the Caribbean”) to deliver a straightforward action movie featuring a furious hero going after a despicable bad guy in a tropical setting. Helping the cause is star Michael Jai White, who tries to go the Van Damme/Seagal/Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Norris route, delivering a charmingly tough guy performance in a picture that truly needs a hit of enjoyable steeliness, playing up the western atmosphere the production is occasionally trying to conjure. “The Island” doesn’t sustain such fury, with Piccinino throttling any potential excitement, trapped between the dramatic inclinations of the material and audience expectations, with viewers left shortchanged when it comes to hard-charging genre activity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com