The Island

Name: The Island
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Released: July 22, 2005
Duration: 136 min
Rating: 50
Cast: Djimon Hounsou, Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi

2005

METASCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Universal acclaim based on 683 Ratings

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8.7

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8.7	User Score Universal acclaim based on 683 Ratings

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The Island

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Movie Details & Credits

DreamWorks Distribution | Release Date: July 22, 2005 | PG-13

Starring: Djimon Hounsou, Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi

Summary: Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly utopian but contained facility in the mid-21st century. Like all the inhabitants of this carefully constructed environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to "The Island" -- reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the plant -- until he makes a terrible discovery that everythingLincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly utopian but contained facility in the mid-21st century. Like all the inhabitants of this carefully constructed environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to "The Island" -- reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the plant -- until he makes a terrible discovery that everything about his existence is a lie. (Warner Bros.)… Expand

Director: Michael Bay

Genre(s): Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 136 min

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Awards & Rankings

38	#38 Most Discussed Movie of 2005
25	#25 Most Shared Movie of 2005

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

Lawrence Toppman

Bay's movie couldn't be more timely; whatever you think about this subject, you might admire his attempt to come to grips with it in a summer blockbuster. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

The movie is more about how many things Michael Bay can smash up -- lots. That might not be a talent most people respect, but it gets through to people anyway, and here Bay does it exceptionally well. Read full review

M. E. Russell

The final third...is so overblown and anticlimactic that it finally gets you thinking about empty profundity and loose ends. Read full review

Maitland McDonagh

For a slick pop entertainment, more than the usual quotient of timely ideas rattle around between the relentless product placements and futuristic geegaws. Read full review

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

As usual, Hollywood hitmeister Bay is more interested in blowing stuff up than in addressing deep questions like the morality of science and the false myths of civilization, and these explosions go on for over two hours. Read full review

David Sterritt

The first half is high-quality science fiction, the rest is a high-tech chase adventure with a gleeful yen for destructive thrills. Read full review

Ann Hornaday

If you find yourself at "The Island" I have only three words of advice: Vote yourself off. Read full review

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User Reviews

LoRevisor

Jan 29, 2015

Obra-Prima de Michael Bay o gênio mais subestimado da história do cinema!!!! pelos críticos e pelo público imbecil!!!! Vale mencionar que são os americanos imbecis!!!!!!. Agora deixar eu respirar um pouco,The Island é um dos melhores filmes de ficção científica de ação de todos osObra-Prima de Michael Bay o gênio mais subestimado da história do cinema!!!! pelos críticos e pelo público imbecil!!!! Vale mencionar que são os americanos imbecis!!!!!!. Agora deixar eu respirar um pouco,The Island é um dos melhores filmes de ficção científica de ação de todos os tempos!!!,Com atuações impecáveis de Scarlett Johansson,Ewan McGregor,Sean Bean,Steve Buscemi,Michael Clarke Duncan e Djimon Hounsou com cenas de ação impressionantes,além disso no final se mostra um filme bem emocionante.… Expand

18 of 18 users found this helpful180

Jack

Oct 14, 2008

Spectacular. Music was nice also.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

StagePro

Nov 13, 2006

I have to say, I also LOVED this movie, but I give it a 9 because hardly ANYTHING I see gets a full 10! lol - When I saw the movie poster and trailer for this flick I thought OH NO, my dear Scarlet sold out to a crap Michael Bay film! NO NO!!! Well, I gave it a chance when it came onto DVD I have to say, I also LOVED this movie, but I give it a 9 because hardly ANYTHING I see gets a full 10! lol - When I saw the movie poster and trailer for this flick I thought OH NO, my dear Scarlet sold out to a crap Michael Bay film! NO NO!!! Well, I gave it a chance when it came onto DVD and I was immediately engaged and oh so pleasantly surprised! Like others mentioned here, it grabs hold of you and never let's you go, and I can't stand action thrillers normally. The human subplot is really truly touching and I am even proud to say I cried at the end of this film for like a half an hour! I also had to run out and get the soundtrack!! Boy am I sap eh?? Scarlet and Ewan really make nice chemistry and the acting is truly superb. I really felt as if I caught a glmipse of where are future could go...as a race if we don't watch ourselves with this cloning business. SEE this movie, check it out, it was worth the 2 hours, it really was... HAIL SCARLET! She is so endearing...… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful

FlickFreaks83

Dec 11, 2015

If there are lots of flashes and bangs, and smoke and fire, either your car has just rear-ended a Pinto or Michael Bay has made a new movie. Sometimes, both are disasters. In the case of The Island, there's enough fun to be had that it's almost possible to ignore the stupidity of the storyIf there are lots of flashes and bangs, and smoke and fire, either your car has just rear-ended a Pinto or Michael Bay has made a new movie. Sometimes, both are disasters. In the case of The Island, there's enough fun to be had that it's almost possible to ignore the stupidity of the story and the cavity that replaces character development. This is a non-interactive video game demo crossed with an amusement park ride. It offers plenty of thrills but nothing else. It looks and sounds good, but satisfies only on the most primal level. For some, this will be enough. Calling The Island a "popcorn, old-fashioned summer movie" is fair, but it's also sad, since it could have been more. But movies that aim low rarely achieve any kind of altitude.

For Michael Bay, this is an opportunity to strike into new territory. This is the first directorial outing in which he has not been partnered with producer Jerry Bruckheimer. It isn't apparent - the movie is just as loud and action-oriented as anything he did with Bruckheimer. In Bay's canon, The Island ranks second - behind the filmmaker's only truly good movie, The Rock, but ahead of such memorable epics as Armageddon,Pearl Harbor, and Bad Boys II. The Island, like Bay, delivers what's expected, and not a thing more. And, although it engaged me during most of its two-plus hour running length, I left the theater feeling a hollow and even a little let down.

To the extent that it takes place in a futuristic setting, The Island functions as science fiction. Really, though, the 2090 locales are just excuses to make things look a little more exotic. The central conceit - cloning - turns into a plot device. Despite the richness of the premise, which asks a number of bio-ethical questions, there is little room for complex moral conundrums once the adrenaline starts pumping. And, for a movie that opens in a field of ideas, it comes as a disappointment to learn that the conclusion is just a big fight with lots of things blowing up. (Rumor has it that the original script, penned by Caspian Tredwell-Owen before Bay became involved and brought in Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci, was more thoughtful and intelligent than the final project. Tredwell-Owen is remaining mum about his opinion of the final product, probably because Dreamworks paid him $1 million for the rights.)

The Island is reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall, which used science fiction ideas as a backdrop for lots of fights, chases, and other assorted excitement. Overall, Recall did a better job, at least in the story department. The action is superior in The Island, but that's probably to be expected, since the bar has been raised considerably since 1989. Others may be reminded of The Matrix and Minority Report, but The Island isn't in the same league. Those two movies were the complete package - not only did they follow through on their tantalizing ideas, but they offered a near-perfect mix of adrenaline and testosterone. They leave The Island bobbing far in their wake.

As disposable entertainment, The Island does what it is supposed to do. There are two remarkable car chases (one featuring oversized barbells), flawless interaction between two identical McGregors (one with an American accent, the other with his proper one), some really big explosions, and enough sequences to make a video game designer smile. Don't expect filet mignon with The Island; this is hamburger. If Martin Scorsese is a fine steak house, then Michael Bay is MacDonald's. And watching the movie is akin to eating in that place. It's fast, greasy, and fills an immediate need, but you'd better have the Rolaids handy for the indigestion that follows.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

FilmMasterEddy

Aug 13, 2016

It’s the year 2019, and Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) is one of several hundred survivors of a cataclysm that left the whole world contaminated, save one place — the eponymous Island. This lush retreat, Lincoln and the other refugees are promised, will one day be their home. For now,It’s the year 2019, and Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) is one of several hundred survivors of a cataclysm that left the whole world contaminated, save one place — the eponymous Island. This lush retreat, Lincoln and the other refugees are promised, will one day be their home. For now, they’re kept in a lavish but sterile research facility, where authorities force them to wear identifying wrist bracelets; their moods, diet and metabolism are carefully monitored; and male-female “proximity” is strictly forbidden.

Suspicious by nature and prone to prophetic nightmares, Lincoln finds his worst fears confirmed after Starkweather (Michael Clarke Duncan), selected by random lottery to go to the Island, instead winds up on a slab. When his friend and burgeoning love interest, Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson), is the next one to win the lottery, Lincoln grabs her and together they stage a jailbreak. Alarmed by the breach, sinister mastermind Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean, adding another to his gallery of villains) hires a mercenary (Djimon Hounsou) to hunt them down.

One of the small charms of “The Island” is that its test-tube protags, far from being hardened heroes, are a pair of brainwashed innocents, sealed off from the outside world and generally lacking in social smarts. McGregor exploits this most winningly, affecting an earnest gee-whiz streak and speaking his lines in a boyish, slightly higher register.

Faring not so well is Johansson, usually the subtlest of actresses, who in her first major action role has been encouraged to make a shrill, bombastic spectacle of her character’s cluelessness.

Another downside of Lincoln and Jordan’s ignorance is that by the time they realize what’s up — that they’re walking “insurance policies,” raised only to supply organs for their genetically identical owners — auds will have long since figured everything out.

While the essentially surprise-free narrative plays catch-up, there’s little to do but sit back and admire Nigel Phelps’ gleaming production design; the biotech facility, in particular, suggests a cross between a day spa, a spaceship and a maximum-security prison. Yet even here, Bay’s direction zips along at such an unmodulated rush, so eager to get on with the next set-piece or expository line of dialogue, that auds will have precious little time to soak up the images, much less allow their potentially troubling implications to deepen and resonate.

Setting and premise conjure countless visual and thematic echoes from other films, including “The Matrix,” with its paranoid dystopian vision and roomful of sticky birth-pods, and even “The Truman Show,” with its 24-hour surveillance cameras and megalomaniacal controller. One scene, featuring an army of mechanized, eye-scanning spiders, is lifted straight out of the more convincingly futuristic “Minority Report.”

The references feel thoroughly secondhand; Bay ultimately is interested in the science and ethics of cloning only insofar as they provide a backdrop for all the vehicular chaos he’s set to unleash. (Ancillary moral: Clones are human, too.)

In terms of spectacle, pic is a pileup of kinetic mayhem, as Lincoln and Jordan’s first actions in the real world include dodging bullets, destroying several police cars and crashing a hovercraft into a skyscraper.

Yet for all the vertiginous camera movements and ace visual effects, the action remains tension-free and largely incoherent, thanks to attention-deficit editing by Paul Rubell and Christian Wagner.

Scribes Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci save their best lines for the superbly snarky Steve Buscemi, as a facility staffer who comes to the clones’ aid (and has a priceless exchange with “Ghost World” co-star Johansson in the process). And pic has sly fun with Lincoln’s and Jordan’s “owners”; former is played by McGregor in an effective second role, while latter is glimpsed in Johansson’s real-life Calvin Klein ad. Other product placements, particularly by Aquafina, are too numerous to mention.

“The Island” is no paradise. In his latest exercise in sensory overkill, producer-helmer Michael Bay takes on the weighty moral conundrums of human cloning, resolving them in a storm of bullets, car chases and more explosions than you can shake a syringe at. Frenetic actioner about refugees from a genetic cloning plant starts off intriguingly, burns up its ideas in the first hour and pads out the rest with joltingly repetitive action sequences.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

Masada

Aug 4, 2019

Not many movies are saved by the story until about the middle. Just yikes. Bay's directing style gives me headaches.

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

AngryMan

Jan 23, 2006

What the hell was that?! I'm getting really ****** off with the whole world of film making, as well as with that surprisingly large proportion of people who sincerely believe that stuff like this is of a high standard. I guess it's a sign of the times we're living in. 1 point What the hell was that?! I'm getting really ****** off with the whole world of film making, as well as with that surprisingly large proportion of people who sincerely believe that stuff like this is of a high standard. I guess it's a sign of the times we're living in. 1 point goes to all those whose combined efforts resulted in me paying to rent this **** and suffer it for 30 minutes before swiching it off in disgust.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful

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