Islands – Review

Tom (Riley) lives the life many dream of, wasting his days away in a resort island and having flings with passing hotties. Permanent sun and freedom from the shit show. He is an ex-tennis professional, who now teaches lethargically to get by and buy alcohol and impress girls in Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands.

One morning he teaches young Anton (Torrell), while his attractive mother Janis (Bolmgren) watches. The kid and Tom have a good time playing, and the lesson passes so another is set up for the following day. The next morning, Anton is back, as well as his father Dave (Farthing) who himself had played a bit of tennis back in the day. While Tom and Dave play a bit, Janis comes in and announces some continuing problems with their room at the resort, and little options to fix them. Tom steps in and gets the family a much nicer suite with plenty of room and no noisy air conditioners or loud sounds from nearby construction sites.

This sounds like a pretty basic, slow, and strange set-up for a mystery movie, and I guess it is, but it does allow for the characters to start growing. It is clear that there is some life tension and drama between Janis and Dave as a couple which is starting to cause some chaos for their relationship. After quite a while however, a potentially criminal plot does emerge and some unknown events have occurred, while a local island investigator Mazo (Blas) stirs up the pot with questions.

If you can handle slow burns with hints of mystery and criminal elements, you will like this. It passes for drama also with plenty of those themes and bit plot points, but there is an uneasy tension in the story revolving around a mysterious unknown or two. The acting is sound and the script is good enough, the biggest issue for viewers will potentially be pacing since the film runs a bit long.

Comparisons below are mostly just slower mystery thriller types, and not really all that similar to this one.