The Island is a Michael Bay movie through and through. A great deal of its time is spent on a chase that involves flying motorcycles, explosions, hovering trains, poorly aimed gunshots, footraces, hand-fighting, helicopter crashes, high speed car races, massive multi-car crashes, skyscraper devastation, and a great deal of destruction to all sorts of other man-made constructions.

Even the score is traditional Bay music. I didn’t recognize which particular film the music evoked, but I recognized the distinct sound from the music of Team America, so I knew it had to be. And the product placement is horrendous.

But Bay pulls it off in two ways. The effects-ridden explosions and destructions are actually fairly fun and, more importantly, they’re set in a fun context. I’ll be the first to admit, however, that the context really has very little value beyond its place as a context for the action. But even while admitting that, I have to admit that it’s still kinda fun.

Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGergor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) are clones in an isolated community of clones who are created in order to produce extra body parts for their original counterparts. But, of course, none of the clones know about it. They believe they are simply waiting for a transfer to an island will they will live out the rest of their lives in bliss.

Lincoln Six Echo begins to question his reality and eventually begins to discover the nature of the truth. While not as trippy or as substantive as the alternatate realities of The Matrix, The Island’s clone world has something going for it. Overseer Merrick (Sean Bean) does his best to keep his products in a state of deception – one whose bland uniformity horrifies us.

But I love the world we’re introduced to as soon as Lincoln and Jordan escape. Their first encounter with reality is a strip bar and the white trash home of McCord (Steve Buscemi). When Lincoln meets his real life counterpart, he is a rich, self-obsessed architect whose only concern is his own self-preservation. The clash of innocence with a corrupt world comes out in full, and it makes you wonder who the deceived ones have really been all along.

Sadly, The Island doesn’t do anything with the notions of reality nor the concepts of cloning it presents. All it really does provide is attention to a potential ethical dilemma, which loudly answers it by informing us that clones are people too, darn it.

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