Movie Review: The Island

A man living in a futuristic sterile colony begins to question his circumscribed existence when his friend is chosen to go to the Island, the last uncontaminated place on earth.

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Never Let Me Go" is a profound meditation on the nature of love, and whether clones can ever be considered truly human. It asks us deep questions about medical ethics and our responsibilities towards our creations.

Michael Bay's "The Island" has an identical plot, but substitutes the philosophy for explosions. Lots of explosions.

And product placement. Seriously, in the future we'll be playing on the XBOX and exploring the web with MSN SEARCH (not Bing!) and chugging down diluted American beer.

Bay's movies are gorgeous to look at. The sweeping wonder of a desert, the tight angled intimacy between two people, the dizzying spectacle of horror unfolding before your eyes. Beautiful. And then he does it again. And again. Until every shot is a cliché.

Scarlett Johansson is woefully underused. For the first 90% of the movie she's a docile ingénue. Admittedly, this was a few years before her action roles in the Avengers saga - but she spends the majority of the time being passive.

For all that, it's a fun movie. Swish sci-fi meets dystopian bio-ethics.