Isolation begins sometime in the future. We’re introduced to 3176, real name Logan (James Drake Coleman), who is beamed into a room on a ship. On a video screen, Director John Cramble (Timothy Banfield) debriefs Logan on his first mission deploying from Earth, with the warning that should he attempt to abandon his mission, he will be considered a fugitive.
Prior to Logan’s recruitment off Earth, he was part of a task force with a Marine, two Navy SEALs, and himself, a Ranger. The best of the best in the United States military. “Yo Joe!” The task force’s mission is to head to North Korea and bring back the Supreme Leader, but the mission goes sideways, leading to Logan disobeying orders and being jailed. This mission off Earth will reduce his sentence and count as time served.
Logan learns he will be passing a planet called Vansix and must retrieve the Sentient Stone from a band of aliens. But other scenes complicate that story, showing Logan camping alone in the woods, dressed in civilian clothes, with an axe and hunting rifle nearby, clearly living off the land. Did he finish the mission and make it home, or is he stranded?
A man’s face is lit in warm tones in this scene from Isolation.
“Logan learns he will be passing a planet called Vansix and must retrieve the Sentient Stone from a band of aliens.”
Rather than settling into a standard Act One, Act Two, Act Three structure, the film splinters into three fragmented threads, leaving the audience unsure exactly where Logan stands in the timeline, a device that echoes Memento. Coleman, who also writes and directs, shoots every shipboard scene in black and white and switches to color everywhere else. The choice works well, giving the ship a mysterious, almost dreamlike quality that could just as easily read as a prison cell.
A highlight that I found in the film, and also saw in the trailer (which was one of those times when I can say a trailer drew me in but didn’t spoil the ending), is Logan’s encounter with the aliens, the Versh, on Vansix. What caught my eye was their costuming. It’s probably really simple in terms of workarounds for Coleman and his crew, or maybe not, but it reminded me of an homage to the Tusken Raiders in Star Wars.
That desert setting pays off again in the fight between Logan and the Versh, which brought back memories of Patrick Swayze’s opening brawl in Steel Dawn. Coleman skips the easy route of laser blasts and CGI, letting the sandy, hilly terrain do the work instead. Nothing about the choreography oversells itself; it’s controlled, precise, and effective without needing spectacle.
Finally, the film is called Isolation, and it runs at just about two hours. If you know me, I do like my efficient runtimes. A lot of films these days are overly indulgent and unnecessarily lengthy. Here, I could have used a small trim from Coleman, but I understand his choice. A lot of the scenes that tend to drag more are moments with Logan by himself, slowly going mad or debating the events around him. Coleman even manages to give a small shout-out to Wilson from Cast Away in the form of a tin cup, giving Logan something to play off of and showing that maybe our protagonist is truly losing it.
"…Did he finish the mission and make it home…or is he stranded?"
