Review: The Island

Hmmm, John had warned me that it was going to be a long film. Clones grown for body parts, a Ewan McGregor (Lincoln Six Echo) with a really bad American accent and a film that was about twice as long as necessary.

After about an hour when our good-boy clone Lincoln Six Echo has escaped into the real world and has a new identity, they could have finished the film with a nicely ambiguous and slightly dark finish (a la Gataca). But ohhhh no, we have to have a Hollywood happy ending which takes another (long) hour.

Why couldn’t the crack-team of ex-Navy Seal assassins shoot straight? Why did Lincoln Six Echo grow new memories of the real world when he was always kept in a confined environment with no outside contact? Why did we have the way-too-obvious product placement? We’ll never know.

Wikipedia has a good entry including notes on controversy (noting the way too prominent product placements) and symbolism. They also link to the fictitious Merrick Biotech website which has been ‘hacked’ by anti-cloning activists (this is all fiction, of course) – including videos. This is a nice bit of marketing I think.

It gets 6.8 over at IMDB and I’ll give it a Thumbs Sideways. I await the day we get a good Sci-Fi flick where the trailers don’t give the entire plot away in 30 seconds and the marketing droids don’t get to sell every scene to the advertisers. Maybe I’ll go watch Kubrick’s 2001 again (but heck, didn’t Bell get some product placement in there as well?).