Anyone familiar with the cult sci-fi film Logan’s Run, the paranoid
medical thriller Coma, or that brilliant modern take on existentialism, The Truman Show, will quickly
piece together the plot that drives The Island.
Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta
(Scarlett Johansson) think that they’re survivors of an apocalyptic
cataclysm known as “the Contamination.” They, along with a few
hundred others, have been told that they were rescued from this awful event
and brought to the industrial utopia where they live to be decontaminated
and trained to do menial jobs. Their incentive is the promise that one day
they will be taken to a paradise known as “the Island.” They
don’t know much about what goes on there, but it’s gotta be
better than filling vials with colored fluids all day and being denied sex.
This seems like a good deal, until Lincoln discovers that he and the rest
of his compatriots are actually clones created so that their owners may
harvest organs.
That this revelation comes merely a half-hour into
this long trek shows where the emphasis is in the story for director
Michael Bay. The fact that Lincoln and Jordan are clones who break free
into the real world to find their human counterparts and get some answers
about their existence is merely a set-up for another shoot-’em-up. A
more thoughtful filmmaker might have slowly unraveled this tale, with the
cloning revelation as the climax of the story, but Bay uses it as a
steppingstone toward blowing up stuff real good, something he’s good
at. Without question, as Lincoln and Jordan run around Los Angeles, circa
2050, bullets fly with precision, bad guys glower, and explosions
accentuate the action.
McGregor and Johansson do a fine job as the clones
lost in a world they never made, but their efforts are wasted — as
are many prime opportunities. This pedestrian exercise is in dire need of
humor. Had this stranger-in-a-strange-land angle been explored more fully,
Bay might have had an effective comedy on his hands. However, what he gives
us is yet another empty exercise in mayhem that generates unintentional
laughs, as well as the need for a dose of aspirin.
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2005.
