CNS Movie Review: The Island

The Island

By Harry Forbes
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Though it's something of a spoiler, we have to tell you: There's no island in "The Island" (DreamWorks).

That revelation comes perhaps 30 minutes into the film, a suspenseful and thought-provoking sci-fi thriller about two clones (Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson) who are part of an Orwellian-like colony seemingly saved from a worldwide catastrophe and deposited in this enclosed modernistic facility where their every move is closely monitored as they go about their business wearing regulation white jumpsuits.

To give the inhabitants hope of life outside the colony, there's an ongoing -- but spurious -- lottery wherein the "lucky" winners will leave the building and live happily ever after on a blissful island. But this is all a ruse, as clone Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) discovers when he stumbles into a classified area, and observes one of his friends (Michael Clarke Duncan) about to be relieved of his liver, and his life.

The clones (or "agnates"), you see, have a smooth-talking but ruthless creator named Merrick (Sean Bean) who manufactures "product" for "rich and famous" people who have a fatal illness or simply wish to live longer.

Horrified, Lincoln races to track down his platonic (agnates don't have sex) friend Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson) -- who has just won the lottery -- and quickly informs her she's about to be killed, not released on the island. (Her unquestioning acceptance of this fact is rather implausible, but never mind), and the two take flight through the inner passages of the colony, and finally out into the real world, which turns out to be somewhere out West in mid-21st century.

Lincoln has a matchbook for a dive bar from McCord (Steve Buscemi), an institute worker who had befriended him. At the bar, they find McCord, who reluctantly informs them they were created artificially, and after giving them clothes and money, escorts them to a train bound for Los Angeles.

But Merrick has hired an investigator (Djimon Hounsou) -- heading a private security team -- to track them down. McCord is killed at the station, and from that point on, our couple is on their own. They arrive in a futuristic Los Angeles, equipped with flying transport and public video phones, and set out to find their "sponsors" who have paid for them, thinking the latter will be morally outraged to learn that not just individual body parts but full-blown humans are being created, but we won't spoil the rest.

Director Michael Bay's action-packed thriller -- from a story by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, who wrote the script with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci -- has the usual (and regrettable) mind-numbing explosions and car crashes, through admittedly deftly executed. These phenomena are especially jarring because of Mauro Fiore's dizzying, jerky camera motions and Paul Rubell and Christian Wagner's quick-cut editing. But production designer Nigel Phelps has succeeded in creating a convincing futuristic environment, and the overall look of the film is striking.

McGregor again impresses with his versatility, and he gets to play two parts: the American clone, and the smarmy Scottish racing car driver who paid for him. The scenes with the two Lincolns playing against each other are among the best of that hoary old device. Johansson is fine as his sidekick, but her's is more of a supporting role. Bean makes an appropriately unctuous villain.

The film is rife with moral considerations ("Agnates have no souls," Merrick says at one point), and conveys a positive overall message about the sanctity of life and, of course, though hardly a serious treatise on the subject, paints a frightening picture of the consequences of cloning, making this a good cautionary tale.

This film contains much action violence, scattered profanity, rough and crude language, mild sexual encounter and innuendo, an irreligious comment, a birth scene and nonexplicit urination scenes. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

END

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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