Review of The Island (2006) by Brett H — 08 Feb 2016

Michael Bay's homage to well-worn themes from the past, The Island is one of his more enjoyable efforts due to the premise and talent of the lead actors, but it's still a pretty dumb sci-fi, action flick that leaves brains behind in the second half.

Taking clear inspiration from films like Logan's Run and THX 1183, The Island follows a population of clones who live in an underground facility due to a supposed extinction-level contamination on the surface, and their only solace is to win a "random lottery" and be one of the lucky selected to be moved to, The Island, a contamination-free paradise.

..or so they think. Ewan McGregor's character begins to question the system until he ultimately finds out that they are bred to be organ donors/surrogate mothers for their wealthy counterparts and escapes the facility with Scarlett Johansson who has just won the lottery.

From there, the intelligence pretty much stops and we're thrust into an overblown and ridiculous chase film where Bay gets to use all of his toys to blow everything up and make his characters invincible to every death-defying stunt he can.

The supporting cast helps to make the story credible with Sean Bean as the head of the program, Djimon Hounsou as a ruthless bounty hunter, and Steve Buscemi hamming it up as an ally to our main characters.

Overall, this is certainly a watchable piece of popcorn entertainment, but the film loses a lot of steam in the second half, and the amount of conveniences/ex machinas that help the main characters live pushes well-past ludicrous.