Reviewed - The Island: Readers familiar with the law of inverse proportionality - which has hitherto governed the relationship between the takings of Michael Bay's films and their quality - could be forgiven for assuming that The Island, the most high-profile casualty to date of this year's slump in the US box office, must be the least terrible film in the director's career.
Near enough, as it happens. The Island is certainly subtler than Pearl Harbor. It is more politically incisive than Bad Boys. It features more restrained performances than those in Armageddon. Had Bay rid himself of his tendency to bully all nuance and emotion out of the drama then he might have got the opening weekend takings down into six figures. Maybe next time.
Appropriately enough for a film that deals with the issue of cloning, The Island feels like an amalgam of any number of dystopian cinematic nightmares. Reminders of Blade Runner, Logan's Run and The Matrix abound, but the most obvious debts are to THX-1138.
Dressed in similar white jump suits to those worn by the heroes of that George Lucas film, Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) move about a bland city where proximity is discouraged and physical health is rigorously maintained by watchful computers. The world outside has, it seems, been rendered almost totally uninhabitable by some poisonous calamity and the right to travel to the only remaining uncontaminated area - the island of the title - is decided by regular lotteries. Winning citizens are never seen again.
Sound a little sinister, sci-fi fans? Lincoln and Jordan think so, and following shocking revelations they flee the city to discover themselves in a world sufficiently sophisticated to allow Los Angeles a working public transport system - but not advanced enough to have eliminated product placement.
To be fair, the best moment in the film sees an advertisement for a popular fragrance being used to get across one delicious aspect of the conspiracy that has kept the heroes in a state of ignorance. There are many such neat concepts in The Island, but they tend to get overpowered by the hysterical editing and indigestibly calorific cinematography.
Indeed, Bay seems intent on brutally suppressing even the slightest hint of a good idea. It transpires that Lincoln and Jordan have no knowledge of sex and that they are educated to only the most basic level, but Johansson and McGregor - who could have fun with this notion - are not allowed to attempt anything too weird or troubling in their performances. It seems strange to hire proper actors and then ask them to do only what members of the Hilton family could do just as well.
All those gripes aside, The Island is about as effective as we could hope a Michael Bay film to be. That sounds like faint praise and that is how it is intended.
