THE ISLAND

The first word that comes to mind when I consider this movie is action. Director Michael Bay did a wonderful job in putting together this movie, and personally, I loved every second of it. There wasn’t one moment where I could look away from the screen, or even whisper to the person next to me. I was so captivated in this movie, it was remarkable.

When the protagonist, Lincoln 6-Echo, and his girlfriend, Jordan 2-Delta, escape from the institution, they end up “on the outside”, Earth, and find that it is, in fact, not contaminated. And for Lincoln and Jordan, Earth soon becomes, eye-popping, in your face, bombastic, action-packed second half with enough chase scenes and explosions to satisfy even the most demanding action fan as the owners of the institution hunt them down. While the action is definitely riveting, it leaves you wondering when things will ever calm down for the two of them?

Probably one of the biggest things that made this movie so entertaining to me was the debate over the moral propositions of cloning humans and the effect is has on the main characters of the movie. Ewan McGreggor stars as Lincoln 6-Echo, a white jumpsuit wearing, tennis shoe missing young man who is having bad dreams and who increasingly questions the world around him. Also clad in a clingy white jumpsuit is Scarlett Johanson as Jordan 2-Delta. Actually everyone in the world these two inhabit wear white jumpsuits. It’s the required uniform in the sanitary, sterile, carefully controlled facility in which they live. The facility residents, all of whom have their food intake monitored and their health checked on a continual basis, live for just one thing: to be chosen to win a trip to The Island. Supposedly The Island is the only place that wasn’t contaminated when an ecological disaster wiped out the entire population of Earth. But something’s literally bugging Lincoln Six-Echo. When he discovers a moth inside the building, he starts to question where it came from. If one moth exists, what else is outside the walls? The old expression curiosity killed the cat can also be applied to clones as Lincoln 6-Echo grabs Jordan 2-Delta and hightails it out of the facility, with a whole slew of security people (and a squad of professional killers) ordered to hunt them down.

Once in the real world, Lincoln Six-Echo and Jordan Two-Delta – with the help of Steve Buscemi as a facility worker who sets them straight – figure out they’re clones. They’re merely living beings created to be used as harvest material should their human counterparts become sick or need spare parts. Pissed off and immediately deciding they’d rather live with all their extremities and internal organs intact, they set off to find the people who had them created – the real humans who paid to be cloned.

Bay puts McGregor, Johansson, and their stunt doubles through the wringer during the latter part of the film as he packs in car chases, a fall from a 20+ story building, and a wild ride on a flying rocket-bike. By far the best scene of the film takes place during Bay’s action tirade when McGregor as Lincoln Six-Echo pushes gigantic rear wheel assemblies off of a tractor trailer and into the path of his pursuers. Incredibly well done and original, that scene actually had me gripping my armrests.

I liked this movie a lot, and would say that it was one of my favorites. I did not, however, appreciate the major plot holes. The director could have explained better why the clones could only be adults but never children, or the conflicts between the clones intellectual integrity. But, overall, the movie was one fantastic, jam-packed action movie, and I appreciated that as much as anything.