The Island

In a future, heavily regimented, underground society, one man (Ewan McGregor) begins to sense that certain facts don’t add up and that the lottery prize of a move to “the Island” (supposedly the last uncontaminated spot on Earth) may not be such an honor after all. Director Michael Bay must have taken one look at the sci-fi script (by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci), with its overtones of bleak Orwellian dystopia, and thought, “I wonder how many car crashes I can cram into this.” Forty years ago, this might have made a decent half-hour on The Twilight Zone; here, interest peters out after an hour or so—just about the time Bay resorts to spasms of over-the-top violence. The actors (McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean, Djimon Hounsou, Steve Buscemi and others) do their best.