Release Date:
07/22/2005
Take The Fugitive, set it in Blade Runner, throw Michael Bay behind the wheel, and you get The Island, the kind of pulse-pounding, rapid-fire entertainment that makes you glad to cough up $10 for a ticket. Unlike Bay's other summer spectacles (Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Pearl Harbor), it would be a mistake to check your brain before entering The Island, which glimpses a future so alarmingly plausible that it could become science fact instead of far-out fiction.
The movie is set in the mid-21st Century, where wealthy people enjoy the kind of insurance coverage that Allstate would cut off its good hands for: when they become gravely ill, policy holders can call for "replacement parts" from manufactured clones. As far as the clones know, they've won a contest to visit an island paradise instead of the scrap heap. Naturally, one of them (Ewan McGregor) discovers the truth, hits the road with a hottie (Scarlett Johansson) in tow, and we're off to the races. (Gentlemen, start your million-dollar action sequences!) What follows is a mind-bending array of foot and car chases, fight scenes, and explosions that keep the movie ripping along until about the two-hour mark, when its high-minded premise starts to run out of gas. With its smart blend of action and humor—most of which is supplied by an amusing supporting turn from Steve Buscemi—this sharp summer thriller asks many intriguing questions about the future. Unfortunately, it still fails to answer why anyone would want to live forever in a world that's spellbound by Britney Spears and Kevin Federline.
The movie is set in the mid-21st Century, where wealthy people enjoy the kind of insurance coverage that Allstate would cut off its good hands for: when they become gravely ill, policy holders can call for "replacement parts" from manufactured clones. As far as the clones know, they've won a contest to visit an island paradise instead of the scrap heap. Naturally, one of them (Ewan McGregor) discovers the truth, hits the road with a hottie (Scarlett Johansson) in tow, and we're off to the races. (Gentlemen, start your million-dollar action sequences!) What follows is a mind-bending array of foot and car chases, fight scenes, and explosions that keep the movie ripping along until about the two-hour mark, when its high-minded premise starts to run out of gas. With its smart blend of action and humor—most of which is supplied by an amusing supporting turn from Steve Buscemi—this sharp summer thriller asks many intriguing questions about the future. Unfortunately, it still fails to answer why anyone would want to live forever in a world that's spellbound by Britney Spears and Kevin Federline.