Bay’s Island Trip to Avoid

In the world of 2019, life as Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) knows it is significantly different than any we could imagine. He and his fellow “agnates,” including the beguiling and flirtatious Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson), live in a closely monitored germ-free society built in the aftermath of a global ecological disaster. It is a mundane, unrelentingly boring existence, one who’s only highlight is the thought they might one day get the honor of making the trek to The Island, the last uncontaminated spot left in the world and ripe for human repopulation.

But before they can all make out like Adam and Eve, first they have to come up a winner in the lottery. The lottery is random game of chance featuring all of the facility’s inhabitants, save for the monitors who have for unknown reasons chosen to stay behind, and it is the only way any of them can get to The Island. Lincoln isn’t so sure about any of this, curious why everything is so statically regimented and what the point of their mind-numbingly banal daily jobs is. He’s also plagued with vivid nightmares that seem to be about someone else’s life, waking in cold sweats filled with memories and sensations he knows couldn’t possibly be his. No matter, for when Jordan wins the lottery and gets scheduled for the next trip to The Island Lincoln couldn’t be happier, sure she’s about to embark on a journey he’d give his right eye to experience in her place.

Experience, that is, until he unwittingly discovers the horrifying truth. The fact is, the world he and his fellow agnates live in is all just a giant high tech lie. He, Jordan and all the rest of their friends are really nothing more than farm-fresh spare parts cloned and grown specifically to function as some rich aristocrats insurance option up in the non-polluted and perfectly habitable real world. Realizing they must make their escape before being cut up like poultry, Lincoln grabs Jordan and ventures into the world above to find his owner, sure that once he sees the evil these selfish scientists are doing he’ll help them set things right.

That’s the last thing Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean) wants. What his company is doing is beyond illegal, and while he’s a firm believer in the scientific and sociological merits of it all he also knows if the truth ever got out he and his billion-dollar corporation would be out of business. To keep that from happening he turns to Laurent (Djimon Hounsou), a highly skilled mercenary who will stop at nothing to make sure Merrick’s secrets are kept just as long as his price for doing so is met. With the authorities starting to become suspicious of their increasingly erratic movements and Laurent’s team closing in, the clones know they must find their doppelgangers fast or life as they know it will come to a quick and violent end.

Welcome to “The Island,” the latest action extravaganza from “Armageddon” maestro Michael Bay where everything blows up spectacularly and intelligence is something better left on the cutting room floor. Not to say this is a bad movie, it’s actually a lot of fun during the early stages, it’s just that when things start to go south they get there so quickly and completely a person is struck dumb by the suddenness. The good ideas drown mercilessly in a sea of idiocy, the banality barely concealed by a monotonous series of crash, boom, bang so concussive hitting one’s head against a brick wall would seem benign in comparison.

Too bad, because for a while there I was starting to think Bay and writers Caspian Tredwall-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci might be on to something. Calling to mind equal parts “Logan’s Run” and “THX-1138,” the group has constructed an eerily cheerful dystopian universe where everything is hidden behind shimmering silver steel and picturesque windswept holograms. More so, the human cloning angle, while not exactly new, is completely believable, the idea that just over two decades from now something similar – if not to the same maniacal scale – could happen completely plausible. Even with Bay’s as-per-usual hyperactivity with the editing machine, the tension in this first hour builds beautifully, the director and his team doing a splendid job of making audiences want to see where it is all going to go next.

The actors help him out tremendously. Bean is a great villain (although, why does he have to show up alone for the climax like a giant out-of-character meathead?), underplaying the part with icy resolve. Michael Clarke Duncan is just fine as an enthusiastic lottery winner who wakes up to discover what he’s actually won is far more lethal than a beachside sunburn, while Steve Buscemi brilliantly shines as a sarcastic computer tech who learns friendship with Lincoln can be bad one’s health. Only Johansson disappoints, the sensationally talented and beautiful (I wish I could look half that good as a blonde and wear outfits a quarter as well as she does) youngster completely out of her element in a big budget spectacular.

Luckily she’s got McGregor holding her hand. No stranger to excessive pyrotechnics and emoting through digitally created action scenes (he did survive three “Star Wars” prequels after all) the actor finds depth and nuance there really isn’t too much of any. Maybe working with Lucas helped him out more than we knew, the actor elevating his character far beyond the dimensions as presented in the script. Better, McGregor gets to fully showcase his talents turning up in a perfectly splendid dual role, a thoroughly roguish Lincoln meeting face-to-face with his more than a bit befuddled and emotionally literal clone. This chance first meet between the duo is priceless, charming and scary and funny and moving all at the very same time, a breathless hint as to the movie that might have been had the filmmakers had the courage to go that route.

Too bad, because once the clones start running from the startling inept Laurent “The Island” quickly morphs into a high octane remake of the “The Fugitive,” only this time devoid of all that pesky subtlety and character development which made the Harrison Ford/Tommy Lee Jones Oscar-winner a classic. Bay may be able to blow stuff up with the best of them and stage breathless action sequences like no other, but he edits them so drastically and at such jackhammer speeds it is impossible to take them all in. The whole thing becomes one gigantic stupefying blur, so exhausting and headache inducing they should offer industrial strength aspirin to viewers as they exit the theater.

By the time it is all over, it didn’t matter how wonderful all the good parts were because I felt so bludgeoned by the rest of it I almost couldn’t stand up. Bay knocked me senseless, shifting my insides this way and that with all the temerity of Gallagher making friends with a watermelon. In fact, when all is said and done, I’m right back to thinking what I did after sitting through Bay’s last two colossal misfires “Pearl Harbor” and “Bad Boys II,” that the director is the antichrist. While that might be overstating things and this work is admittedly better than those last two catastrophes, “The Island” is still one trip to paradise I can only hope to avoid more of in the future.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)