What do you think of this story?

Click here to send a message to the editor.

Bad Links?
Other glitches?
Notify Webmaster

“The Island” - Paradise Lost

Director Michael Bay, known for the films “Armageddon,” “Bad Boys” and “Pearl Harbor” put his heavy hands on the subject of cloning and came up with “The Island,” a movie that succeeds in fits and starts but ultimately is less than satisfying.

Ewan McGregor plays the inquisitive Lincoln Six Echo, a clone who doesn’t know he’s a clone. He is part of a society of clones that are basically organ farms for the ultra-rich. A client pays the Merrick company millions of dollars for them to grow an adult clone of them-self. If they ever need an organ transplant or a surrogate mother, their clone is there. When the clone is needed, they are told they have won the lottery and will be going to “The Island,” the last remaining paradise in a world that has been contaminated.

The film moves along fairly well as we watch the clones in the Merrick society. The audience sees how it all works and Bay’s attention to detail is astounding. The clones are monitored in every way possible and all decisions are made for them. To some eyes it seems like Utopia, but when a man can’t get bacon for breakfast when he wants to, something is wrong. This leads Lincoln to start asking questions and when his friend, Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) wins the lottery, he finds out the horrible answers. Lincoln rescues Jordan from a terrible fate and they become clones on the run.

This is where the film gets choppy.

When it is good, it’s engaging and very good. A scene in a dirty bar provides a few laughs and the first few minutes of a highway chase are great. Unfortunately, this where Bay totally Bay-s out. The scene stretches out interminably and there are too many car flippings, explosions, gunshots, etc. I got very bored with it all and started to picture a young Bay playing very roughly with his toys.

When Lincoln finds the man who commissioned the clone of himself, the film picks up again. McGregor plays the two roles very well and the scenes have a very tongue in cheek feel. He is a fine actor that has proven to be someone that can lift a film up. Johansson is a wonderful actress herself but she is kind of wasted in this film and at times seems out of place. One problem I had with her character was that in one scene in the Merrick society we see that she has good fighting skills and yet she never uses them when the kajillion bad guys are after them. Someone should tell Bay that audiences like girls that can kick a little butt.

Eventually, Lincoln and Jordan go back to the Merrick building with a plan to save all of their former comrades from terrible fates. You see, what the clients of Merrick don’t know but what the audience has come to discover is that clones have souls and what Merrick does is murder. The message that man should not play God is made loud and clear and it will be hammered in again with Bay’s next film “Stem Cell Research: Horrible Healing.”

Just kidding.

“The Island” is a hybrid between a cool sci-fi film and a dumb action movie. It was better as a sci-fi film, but that wouldn’t have pulled in the budget that Bay wanted so that he could blow up all of his wonderful toys. If you do see this movie, ask yourself at the end, where are all the clones going to go? Will L.A. have even more homeless people now? I pondered this conundrum more than the moral dilemma of cloning.

• *1/2