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The Island

2005

Michael Bay

Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean ...

6.2

56,717

Sci-Fi. Thriller. Action Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly utopian but contained facility in the year 2019. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to the “The Island”—reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything about his existence is a lie. He and all of the other inhabitants of the facility are actually human clones whose ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The first half of Michael Bay's new film is a spare, creepy science fiction parable, and then it shifts into a high-tech action picture. Both halves work (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"This lavish, exhaustingly kinetic film is smarter than you might expect, and at the same time dumber than it could be. It's an impressive product: a triumph of cloning that almost convinces you that it possesses a soul."	NEU
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"A borrowed idea — hello, 'Blade Runner', hi there, 'Matrix' — but an idea nonetheless (...) Bad acting and moral incoherence, very much like old Bay movies (…) Rating: ★½ (out of 4)"	NEG
United States	Justin Chang Variety	"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"	NEU
United States	Ann Hornaday The Washington Post	"Surrounded by banality on all sides (...) If you find yourself at 'The Island' I have only three words of advice: Vote yourself off."	NEG
United States	Kyle Smith New York Post	"Bay's best film since 'The Rock'"	POS
United States	Claudia Puig USA Today	"This frenzied fiesta of firepower is about cloning people for spare parts, but the movie is a clone itself. Possessing no new ideas, it reworks and borrows from such films as 'Blade Runner', 'The Matrix' and 'Logan's Run' (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEU
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"The point is to blow things up and crash shiny black vehicles into each other, and that really does get dull (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"	NEG
United States	Nathan Rabin AV Club	"Bay stages the action at a breakneck pace that's never frenetic enough to obscure his film's plot holes and logical lapses"	NEG

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