incoln Six-Echo (McGregor) is alive and well and living in the mid-21st century. Life is good, and simple. He gets up every day, puts on the same clothes and the same shoes, eats pretty much the same food and heads off to the same job. But it's starting to dawn on him that there must be more. Why can't he sport different shoes? Why can't he devour bacon whenever he wants? Why can't he stand too close to Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson), another resident at the contained facility they and a good many other people call home?
They believe it's for their own good, that the rest of the world is contaminated, save for one pristine place—The Island—where the lucky few who win a periodic lottery (or give birth) get to go, in the hopes of repopulating the planet. Prophetic nightmares and reality, however, prod Lincoln to action. That he's having nightmares at all—inexplicably glimpsing boats and Latin words—is of grave concern to Merrick (Bean), who runs the facility. And stoking Lincoln's interest in the outside world even further is McCord (Buscemi), a facility employee who drops hints about life beyond his immediate surroundings.
Lincoln soon uncovers the truth: That he and everyone else there are clones, clones created to provide spare parts for their "sponsors," people who ponied up $5 million each for the ultimate life insurance policy. Those lucky enough to win a trip to the Island are going to no such place; it's merely time to die. Determined to survive, Lincoln takes Jordan by the hand and flees, but Merrick will stop at nothing to capture or kill the clones, enlisting Laurent (Hounsou) and his elite team of mercenaries to do the deed before the whole sordid enterprise implodes.
Lot of action, little thought
If you like your sci-fi/action movies big, loud and empty, then The Island is for you. Bay is not the most subtle of directors, and that's at once his downfall and his gift. The first 30-plus minutes are all setup, topical sci-fi designed to suck you into the concept and convince you to care for the characters. The next nearly two hours are crammed with near-nonstop, breathless action, as Lincoln and Jordan dodge bullets, cars and helicopters and dangle from flying motorcycles and the sides of buildings as, all the while, the carnage around them grows exponentially. It's obvious during the intro scenes that Bay is just itching to jump to the action, but give him credit for holding fire even for the short while he does it, as doing so actually serves the intended purpose of building goodwill for Lincoln and Jordan. And the action sequences are jaw-dropping, visually and otherwise. Stuff goes BOOM, not boom. It's an awesome display of pyrotechnics and, with the sound ratcheted past 12 on a dial that stops at 10, one of the loudest movies ever produced.
Bay, again to his credit, assembled a top-notch cast and wisely gives them some room to play. McGregor shines as the naïve simpleton who throws off the establishment by developing a mind of his own, and he's even better in a supporting role as Tom Lincoln, the clone's Scottish sponsor and a genuine jerk. Johansson handles the action with aplomb and shares some nice chemistry with McGregor, though she's saddled with the less developed role of the two. The supporting cast also turn in fine performances. Phillips plays a jittery resident desperate to reach the Island, and Bay delivers a nice payoff for this character's story. Bean is properly menacing, Hounsou at once threatening and human, and Buscemi, as usual, steals all his scenes and elicits the biggest chuckles. Duncan appears briefly in a memorable sequence, but too little is known about the character to give his struggle much dramatic heft.
So, what have we got? A would-be thinking person's action movie that abandons all thought after 30 minutes. A relentless chase flick in which one sequence is bigger than the next and bigger than the next and bigger than the next, to the point of overkill. A derivative thriller that echoes Logan's Run, The Fugitive, THX 1138, The Matrix, Minority Report and Coma, to name just a few. Yet it's masterfully choreographed and brought to life by strong actors and, in the end, compulsively entertaining.
