Strong and Moving!

Sadly Over-hyped

Absolutely Fantastic

Blistering performances.

Opened up my mind. Has lots of twist and turns! Deff should watch !

Really just a high budget remake of Parts: The Clonus Horror, the cast makes this work. Action packed, with some missing bits of logic, I could easily see a bunch of rich humps running a secret facility full of their clones to keep them alive through organ transplants. It's fun to watch, just don't expect much in the way of logic.

THE ISLAND is one of those films that starts off promising with an intriguing first hour before descending into the kind of banality that only Michael Bay knows how to make – see TRANSFORMERS for another good example. For the first hour or so we're put into an institutionalised world of clones and cloning and the suspense moves along quite a bit. Although the movie is obviously heavily derived from others that have come before it – LOGAN'S RUN, MINORITY REPORT, most noticeably THE CLONUS HORROR (the makers of whom were compensated due to the 'similarities'), it moves along nicely with some nice supporting acting to drive us along. All right, so Bay's camera-work can be a bit distracting (vertigo-inducing at times) but I was really enjoying it.Then the two heroes of the film escape the compound and the buck stops there. It's as if that was the end of the script and the guys on set were just making it up as they went along. Sure, there are a few twists (including the inevitable clone-meeting-the-cloned scene) and an ending that confirms EXACTLY to Hollywood standards, but for the rest this is just a big, long bloated action scene that lasts almost an hour and a half after the story ends. Now I love action movies – and sometimes I love films where they're just action without story (usually martial arts films like WARRIOR KING). But the action here is overblown, over-bloated, and soulless, action where they're throwing millions of dollars a minute at the screen but can get hardly anything right. Cars explode, people are shot and blown up, buildings are trashed and people jump off skyscrapers and survive. None of it is remotely realistic but I did enjoy – hugely, come to that – one bit, which is the freeway chase, when the good guys on a truck are off-loading train wheels at their pursuers. Okay, so it's an obvious reprise of the freeway chase in BAD BOYS II, but in terms of sheer spectacle and carnage it takes some beating.So much time is spent on the action that the ending is really rushed and full of plot holes. Once again we have an enemy base with a built-in 'self destruct' button (or rather, a lever here) that blows the whole thing – why do they make such expensive places so simple to destroy? There are other crazy moments – characters switching allegiance just like that, one character getting captured and not even searched so they can produce a weapon later – but by this stage you end up not caring. The fault definitely lies with Bay and the scriptwriter, because the actors do a decent job. McGregor and Johansson are young, pretty, fairly charismatic leads, and the likes of Michael Clarke Duncan, Steve Buscemi, and Ethan Phillips put in great minor performances. Sean Bean's on hand as the typecast British bad guy but he's still good value for money. The only one who sticks out like a sore thumb is Djimon Hounsou, so good in BLOOD DIAMOND, so wooden here. You wouldn't believe it's the same guy, but then again he gets about three lines of dialogue and the camera just dwells on him looking 'cool' for the rest of it. In the end, THE ISLAND is really a film of two halves – a good first half and a pretty bad second. It evens off as a distinctly average movie, one you can watch but not bother seeing again.

I love The Island, because it breaks ranks from Michael Bay's mostly uniform career and gives us entertainment where story is as important as action, which can't be said for most of his films. Don't get me wrong, I love his destructive maelstrom of a career to bits (except Transformers and Pain & Gain. Those are shameful.), it's just nice to get a movie from him with something to latch onto besides just... boom crash smash. His visual setups are like fire dancing on the retinas, but with The Island we get to see what's behind those eyes and actually get a concept to explore along with our helping of razzle dazzle. Now this type of story has been done before, in stuff like Logan's Run or the lesser known Clonus Horror, and obviously this time around the story is jazzed by a considerable amount of chromed up energy and adrenaline. In the far future, a group of people are kept inside a gargantuan facility and told that the world's population has been nearly wiped out by a contamination. Only one untainted zone remains: The Island. It's a place where some take off to, after winning a much touted 'lottery' that allows them access. Only, they aren't going to any such place at all. They are selected based on the need for organs, spare biological matter and baby carriers for their human counterparts, the rich and affluent. They're dormant cattle, so to speak, clones awaiting empty promises. Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) is one such individual, a curious fellow who first suspects something is wrong with their utopian existence, and once confirmed knows he needs to get out. Dragging along his friend Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) he makes a harebrained run for it, escaping the facility and venturing into the world outside, which is anything but contaminated. I like what Bay did with the production design; Things aren't too wacky or space agey, and more or less that same as now, but accents like flying motorbikes or massive additions to existing skyscrapers let us know how brave of a new world it is. Lincoln and Jordan suffer considerable culture shock as they flee, and it's amusing to see the childish way they react to simple things like a telephone, or ordering drinks at a bar. The facility's Director, an arrogant son of a bitch named Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean) sends a team of off the books ex special forces dudes after them, led by Laurent (Djimon Hounsou gets the best moments out of the film, the only actor who can stop the momentum dead in its tracks with his soulful performance). From there a lot of it is a deafening roar filled with chases, car crashes, fights and a spectacular highway chase that will wake up the tenants both above and below your apartment. Yes, Bay just can't help throwing in colossal action scenes where they aren't particularly needed, and complain if you must, but if it's really that much of a wrench in your enjoyment of the actual story going on around it, then use such interludes for a bathroom break or to go apologize to the neighbors for the racket your speakers are kicking up. You can only hope for Bay to reign it in so much, the dude just loves his action. Ask him to direct a Jane Austen adaptation and you can bet your hat he'd throw in a fireball or two in just for good measure. It's his passion, and I don't resent people for what they love to do. In any case it's a terrifically fun piece. McGregor and Johansson are pitch perfect, as they begin to clue in about the world around them, lashing out in anger over what's being done to them and becoming quite resourceful. Bean resists the label of villain with his performance, branding Merrick as an idealist whose breakthrough blinded him into extremism, from which there is no turning back. Steve Buscemi shows up bearing kindly comic relief as a tech worker who assists in their escape. Michael Clarke Duncan is very affecting in one scene as a clone who finds out the truth the worst way possible. There's also work from Shawnee Smith, Chris Ellis, Max Baker, Glenn Morshower and an incredibly bizarre cameo from an uncredited Kim Coates. Steve Jablonsky composes what I believe to be his finest, most stirring work and the best score to date in a Bay flick, adding to the sweeping scope and pure cinematic current that this one soars on. One of my favourites, highly recommended.