The Island

From AwardAnnals

Reviews

Amazon.com

When you add up all the best things about The Island, you might just conclude that there’s hope yet for Hollywood’s most critically reviled hit-maker, Michael Bay. Recruited by Steven Spielberg to direct this lavish and often breathtaking sci-fi action thriller, Bay rises to the occasion with an ambitious production that is, by his standards (and compared to Bay’s earlier hits like The Rock and Armageddon), surprisingly intelligent as it explores the repercussions of cloning in a sealed-off society where humans are cultivated for spare parts, surrogate parenthood, and full-body replacements for wealthy clientele. But when two of the clones (Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johanssen) begin to question their fate and the motives of their keepers, they escape into the real world and The Island becomes just another Michael Bay action extravaganza, albeit an impressively exciting one. With elaborate chase scenes and a high-tech feast of CGI to dazzle the eye, The Island recycles much of the plot from 1979’s Clonus while borrowing elements from Logan’s Run, Gattaca and Minority Report, and while it’s not as smartly conceived as those earlier films, there’s no denying that, in many ways, it’s Bay’s best film to date. —Jeff Shannon

Barnes and Noble

Roundly panned by critics and slighted by moviegoers who paid too much attention to the negative buzz, this futuristic action thriller didn’t really get a fair shake at the nation’s box offices. Granted, The Island is a little slow to get going and unnecessarily confusing in spots, but it’s hardly the unmitigated disaster its detractors claimed. Ewan McGregor stars as Lincoln Six-Echo, one of the innumerable residents housed in a hermitically sealed community during the mid-21st century. Like his neighbors and co-workers in this highly regulated society, Lincoln hopes to win the lottery that awards passage to a utopian island rumored to be the last uncontaminated spot on Earth. This ordered society holds a dark secret, however, and when Lincoln discovers this he stages an escape with fellow resident Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson)—and then the fun really begins. Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay, no stranger to overblown, noisy, and explosive action sequences, works his magic on the third act of this exposition-heavy yarn, which kicks into gear with McGregor and Johansson’s elaborate escape. There’s a mystery element to The Island that, while not terribly difficult to unravel, shifts the focus away from the seemingly allegorical import of the film’s earlier section. It also heightens the suspense; once viewers know the secret of the island, they become more emotionally vested in the safety of Lincoln and Jordan. At times the whole thing seems pretty foolish, but that’s where the skillful supporting turns of Steve Buscemi, Sean Bean, and Djimon Hounsou come in: their earnest performances in small but important roles lend much-needed credibility to the picture. The end result is an entertaining if minor action film with sci-fi trappings. Ed Hulse