The Island

It is 2019, and for the last three years, Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) has lived in a colony of uncontaminated humans, each awaiting their chance to go to the last habitable place on Earth, known as "the Island." Lincoln is discontent and although he works and socializes well, he is known for being an outsider. During a meeting with Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean), the leader of the area where he lives, Lincoln seems helpless to explain his feelings. He is frustrated by the plain white clothes everyone is given and the strict control over everyone's activities and habits. Concerned, Merrick asks to run tests on Lincoln, and inserts some robot probes into his eye sockets to monitor his activities for 24 hours. Lincoln learns that his best friend, Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson), will soon be leaving for "the Island." Through an illicit visit to a construction area, Lincoln Six surreptitiously discovers that two former colonists, who were recently thought gone to the Island, are instead being subjected to brutal, ultimately fatal medical procedures and organ harvesting. He returns to the colony to rescue Jordan Two from a similar fate, but not before company chief Dr. Merrick discovers that Lincoln Six now knows the truth.
Through their escape, Lincoln Six and Jordan Two discover that the outside world is completely habitable and uncontaminated, and that each of them is a clone of a wealthy "sponsor" who paid five million dollars to be cloned as "insurance" to prolong the sponsor's life. Though they appear human, clones are in fact incubated to adulthood in as little as a year and thought of only as a product. While cloning itself is legal, allowing the clones to attain consciousness is not, and is contrary to what clients are told. However, without consciousness, Merrick confides, the product is not viable - the clones die and no use can be made of them. Thus, for financial and legal motivations, Merrick hires aparamilitary force, commanded by Albert Laurent (Djimon Hounsou), to use any means necessary to take out the two escaped clones. Merrick also discovers that Lincoln Six has some of the memories and skills inherited from his sponsor, therefore instead of having a mind designed equivalent of a fifteen year old, he is as intelligent as an adult.
The two clones escape to Los Angeles in hope of finding their sponsors. During these times, they begin to explore their feelings they have toward each other since before their escape, eventually becomes romantic. Jordan learns she is the clone of a famous model, Sarah Jordan, who has recently suffered a debilitating accident and is in a coma in New York City. They find Lincoln Six's sponsor at his L.A. home. He is Tom Lincoln, who is in imminent risk of liver failure. While sponsor and clone become acquainted, Lincoln Six recruits his sponsor to appear together on T.V. in order to expose the corporation and reveal the truth. On the way to the T.V. studio, however, Tom Lincoln attempts to preserve his "insurance" by turning against his clone. Lincoln Six turns the tables on his sponsor, tricks Laurent into killing Tom, and assumes Tom's identity.
Though Merrick is much relieved to hear Lincoln Six is dead, he has discovered that three entire product lines share the same "flaw" (clones exhibiting similar neural patterns as Lincoln Six before birth) and subsequently orders a "recall" — the destruction of scores of clones. Meanwhile, having assumed the identity of his sponsor, Lincoln Six finds a way to turn the tables on Merrick's corporation, and with help from Jordan and an unexpected alliance with Laurent, kills Merrick and rescues the colonists. The film ends with Lincoln and Jordan together riding the powerboat Renovatio to an unknown destination, which translates from Latin to mean the verb "Rebirth".


written by: Luís Montijo

posted by: Isabel Brito da Luz