The Island is a lavishly-produced science fiction thriller heavy on the thrills and relatively light on the science. The film relies on some surprise revelations for much of its impact, so if you have not seen it yet, you might want to do so before reading this description.
The films opens with a dream sequence in which we see Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) riding on a sleek boat with his friend Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson). He is dragged beneath the water by strange people and drowned before he wakes up. His room is spare and futuristic, with a display on his wall that shows text messages. A message appears telling him to report for a health check.
Lincoln Six Echo makes his way through his morning routine of dressing in a white jumpsuit chosen from several identical ones. We see that he and many other identically-clad people are constantly monitored, their behavior held in check by black-jumpsuit-clad Censors that intervene in the case of emotional outbursts or to separate men and women from prolonged proximity. Wall-sized video displays announce the winner of the day's lottery, who has just won what everyone hopes for, being released to the Island, the only part of the world free of a cataclysmic contamination event that wiped out almost all life.
Lincoln Six Echo meets with Dr. Bernard Merrick (Sean Bean) for his health check. He recounts his dream, drawing a picture of the boat "Renovatio." He has a lot of questions for Dr. Merrick, expressing the view that there has to be more to life than just waiting to win the lottery and go out to the Island. Dr. Merrick decides that a "synaptic brain scan" is in order, and straps Lincoln Six Echo down in an examination chair before releasing a group of miniature robots (hardly nano scale!) that crawl under his eyelid to follow his optic nerve to his brain.
Lincoln Six Echo reports to work, injecting nutrients into feed lines and engaging one of his coworkers in small talk. When another coworker goes into labor, he uses the commotion to yank a storage device from his computer, disabling his workstation. A supervisor asks him to assist with decontamination and he makes his way to a maintenance area where he has befriended James McCord (Steve Buscemi). He and "Mac" share a few sips from a hip flask as Mac nervously reminds him not to tell anyone about their conversations. As Mac leaves on a maintenance call, Lincoln Six Echo discovers and captures a live moth, bringing it back to his room, puzzled that it shouldn't exist if almost everything in the outside world has been killed off by contamination.
Mac's maintenance call takes him to a laboratory where technicians are about to perform a "product extraction." They sever an umbilicus and cut through a huge plastic amniotic sac to give birth to a full-sized adult, who acts like a newborn as they get him breathing and cleaned up.
Later that day, Lincoln Six Echo's friend Jordan Two Delta wins the lottery to be sent to the Island. Inspired by the moth that he has captured, Lincoln Six Echo climbs a ladder up a shaft in the maintenance area, coming up through a floor panel into a medical area. He sees his pregnant coworker give birth, but the doctors won't let her hold the baby, which they carry off as a nurse euthanizes the mother. We see the new baby given to a couple; the woman looks identical to the one just euthanized.
Lincoln Six Echo flees this area, only to encounter Starkweather Two Delta (Michael Clarke Duncan), the morning's lottery winner, escaping from an operating room where surgical robots have made the first cut to harvest his liver. Starkweather makes a bold break for freedom but is brought down by security guards. Lincoln Six Echo makes his way back to his living quarters, but not before being identified by Dr. Merrick on footage from a security camera.
Lincoln Six Echo enters the women's dorm area to rescue Jordan Two Delta. They run for freedom, barely escaping security guards as they stumble through an education center where immobilized "products" are fed memories of a childhood that they never had. As the two escapees sprint over a catwalk that appears to lead to the Island, they pass through a wall of light that reveals that the Island and all of the outside word that they have seen through the windows of their complex is a holographic projection. They climb out of their false world, emerging from a silo into the desert in Arizona. They make their way, bewildered, through a world of which they have no knowledge.
Back in at Merrick Biotech, Dr. Merrick is agitated about the escape as he makes a product pitch to wealthy investors. He describes the construction of "agnates," an organic frame engineered into adulthood, genetically identical to the client, to be used for surrogate motherhood or organ transplant in case of emergency. He tells the investors that agnates are in a permanent vegetative state and are not human. He turns the presentation over to his PR director, Charles Whitman (Kim Coates), as he meets with Albert Laurent (Djimon Hounsou), a mercenary who he has engaged to hunt down the escapees. Mr. Laurent has heard the product pitch and shows little surprise on being told that it is a lie, that the escapees are agnates who must be recovered to conceal the horrible truth behind Merrick Biotech.
Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta pursue a clue on a matchbox that Lincoln got from Mac, and find their way to a bar in the middle of nowhere that Mac frequents. They make their way to the bar, a beat-up place with scruffy customers where the two stand out in their white jumpsuits and naive manner. The find Mac, who takes them to his house.
It is here that Mac has to explain to the two escapees that, in his words, "there is no Santa Claus," and that they are not human, or rather not real, but are actually clones, copies of people on the outside. Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta protest, citing their memories of growing up. Mac tells them that these are just memory imprints, built on about a dozen different story lines. Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta want to find their "sponsors" to tell them the truth. Mac is unable to talk them out of this idea, eventually becoming convinced to help them.
They make their way to a train station to send Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta to Los Angeles, where Lincoln's sponsor Tom Lincoln lives. Meanwhile, the mercenary team locates them, and the chase is on. The two make it onto the train to L.A., where the level of mayhem escalates. When Lincoln Six Echo uses a stolen credit card, the L.A.P.D. swoops in and apprehends them. Because they have no IDs, the police will be running a DNA profile. Dr. Merrick authorizes the mercenary team to use all means to prevent that, and the film moves to the next level of mayhem, with car chases involving helicopters, jet-powered flying motorcycles, and flatbed trucks loaded with heavy metal objects that end up in the traffic flow. Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta emerge from this remarkably unscathed.
They make their way to the home of Tom Lincoln. The facial recognition system on the front door recognizes Lincoln Six Echo and opens. The two meet Tom Lincoln, who after recovering from the shock, secretly calls Merrick Biotech to report the problem. Lincoln Six Echo and Tom Lincoln leave, allegedly to go to a TV station, but Tom Lincoln is only interested in preserving his "insurance policy." There is one last chase from the mercenary team before Mr. Laurent finds the client and the clone in an armed standoff. He can't tell them apart until Lincoln Six Echo slaps his clone ID bracelet on Tom Lincoln; Mr. Laurent shoots the wrong guy. Lincoln Six Echo assumes Tom Lincoln's identity.
Back at Merrick Biotech, they face the need to retire all recent models of the product, who are displaying curiosity. They announce many new winners of the lottery to go to the Island in order to retire $200 million in defective product.
The mercenaries capture Jordan Two Delta and return her to Merrick Biotech, just as Lincoln Six Echo returns (as Tom Lincoln) for a new scan and no-cost replacement of his insurance policy. Mr. Laurent and Dr. Merrick have a conversation about killing as a business. Dr. Merrick explains that Jordan Two Delta's organs will be harvested even though the client has suffered irreplaceable brain damage. Mr. Laurent is troubled by the proposed senseless killing, and quietly turns.
Inside Merrick Biotech, Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta meet up to begin their plan to escape while rescuing as many of their friends as possible. Their escape from Merrick Biotech tops even the mayhem of the prior action. The film ends with hundreds of white-jumpsuit-clad clones emerging into the Arizona sunlight, with Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta beginning their lives as real people.
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Human Cloning. The clones produced in this movie are produced using the donor's DNA, and are genetically identical to the donor. In order to make the plot work, they have to be the same apparent age as the donor, even though they might be only three or four years old. The film deals with this by showing the clone's "birthing" process. Adult-sized clones are produced in synthetic wombs using some process that accelerates normal development. When clones are "born" with the assistance of technicians, they are trundled off to a facility where they are strapped down with multiple screens in front of their eyes to impart one of a dozen different life stories into the clones, who then believe that they are adults with authentic memories of childhood.
Scientific accuracy. Cloned mammals have been grown to maturity by implanting embryos in surrogate mothers and allowing them to be born normally. There is currently no technique that would allow the development of a mammalian embryo outside of the womb of a foster mother. It is conceivable that this sort of technical breakthrough might be achieved, although it hardly seems necessary when the use of foster mothers has proven to be straightforward.
It is difficult to imagine how development might be accelerated to produce adult animals in the time frame normally required for embryonic development. The film makes matters worse by having a character explain that the clones are aged to the precise age of the sponsor before being "born." We can't say that this is impossible given sufficiently advanced science and technology. This aspect of the science fiction behind the film puts things far beyond the known, on the bleeding edge of scientific speculation, so we can't really penalize the film harshly for this.
Education of Clones. The first step in the education of a clone appears to be the use of sound and video to create memories of a past. The clones are immobilized during this process. We also see a new clone brought into work on the first day; the clone is nonverbal and is taught how to inject nutrients into feed lines by a trainer who moves the clone's arms and hands. We see clones further along in their education learning to read from Dick and Jane books. Later we learn that clones are "not taught about" sex, so they have no knowledge of it or interest in it.
Scientific accuracy. We have no experience with human beings born with adult bodies. Nevertheless, it is well known that brain development continues throughout adolescence, and that brain development and learning is guided by a child's relentless exploration of his or her environment and social interactions with parents and other people. It is hard to imagine how an adult clone, educated by being strapped into a virtual reality set, would learn how to walk. It is also difficult to imagine that the human sex drive can be extinguished by the omission of educational materials, although this has been attempted in some public schools.
Diagnostic Nanobots. The use of nanobots for medical diagnosis is a widely-predicted development in medicine. Unfortunately, because nanobots would not be visible to the naked eye, for purposes of the film they are about the size of BB pellets, which would make damage-free passage along the optic nerve challenging. The results of the "synaptic brain scan" are impressive, revealing that Lincoln Six Echo has learned things by leaps and bounds since his early education.
Scientific accuracy. This is not a serious piece of science fiction. Apart from the size of the nanobots, they transmit data with a strong enough signal to be detected a half a mile away. This is certainly energy overkill for the application that they are designed for, medical diagnosis. Clearly, this has just been stuffed into the film to give the mercenary team a chance to reacquire Lincoln Six Echo after he escapes to the outside world.
The Nature of Memory. Even if we grant that strapping an accelerated clone into a VR set for a while can produce an individual that remembers his or her upbringing and can pass for a more-or-less regular person, the film strains our credulity on another detail about memory. In the dream sequence that opens the film, Lincoln Six Echo has specific memories (the design of a boat and its name, Renovatio, which is Latin, a language to which he has not been exposed) derived from the life experience of his "sponsor," Tom Lincoln. When viewing some of Tom Lincoln's design sketches, he remarks that they seem familiar to him. He knows how to drive and how to ride a jet-powered flying motorcycle, despite never having any training in this. Tom Lincoln and Jordan Two Delta remark on these abilities, but Lincoln Six Echo seems confident, if bewildered, at how he has learned these things.
Scientific accuracy. There is absolutely no basis for the transfer of specific memories from an individual to a clone via DNA. Memories acquired from life experience are stored in some way in the brain that does not involve the transmissible modification of the genome. While there are many things that are not understood about memory, this idea is so far from what is well understood that it is ridiculously implausible. While this idea makes the film more fun and moves the plot along, here we step from science fiction into fantasy.
Summary. It's easy to like this film for its production values, a tight script, a good cast, and some breathtaking action sequences. The science fiction here is not very good. As a cloning movie, the science is far better than that of The Sixth Day, which we gave a one-flask rating on the basis of its ridiculous premise of growing clone "blanks" which can be quickly corrected with donor DNA and memories. Because the cloning here is slightly more plausible and scientifically accurate than this low standard, we give the film's science a two-flask rating. We might have rated it higher except for the ridiculous fantasy that clones would acquire the donor's memories by some supernatural process.
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Ethics of Cloning. This film gets off to a good start in the ELSI area, acknowledging that society would consider cloned human beings as people like any other. This is reflected in the deep need for secrecy at Merrick Biotech, as their practices are acknowledged to be illegal as well as unethical.
There is very little room for debate here, as living human beings, whether born naturally or from cloning, cannot be considered as the property of another person. In the United States, this was settled in the nineteenth century when slavery was abolished. Perhaps the protagonist's name (Lincoln Six Echo/Tom Lincoln) is meant to evoke this period of history to remind us of the central theme of the film: are there any circumstances under which we can consider another person to be our property?
There is an interesting moment when Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta get introduced to the outside world following their escape. At Mac's place, after he explains the nature of their existence to them, Lincoln Six Echo decides that they must find their sponsors and tell the world what is going on at Merrick Biotech. Mac thinks that this is a really bad idea. He argues that people, especially rich people with the power to do as they wish, will do anything to live. Lincoln Six Echo thinks that they might change their minds if they find out the truth, but Mac insists that, "Just because they want to enjoy the burger, doesn't mean they want to meet the cow."
The film asks us what we would do to continue our existence beyond nature's term limits. What if you could extend your life for sixty or seventy years by doing something illegal and unethical? It is easy to say no in the comfort of an armchair, but faced with a life or death situation, how many people would consider it? For Tom Lincoln, it was an easy choice. He paid half a million dollars for a car, five million for a clone. He was diagnosed with cirrhotic hepatitis and given about five years before his liver gave out. When he meets Lincoln Six Echo, he has about two years to go. Given the choice to expose the practices of Merrick Biotech or take care of himself, he chooses the latter.
Currently available medical technology offers organ transplantation from reasonably-matched donors combined with immunosuppressive drugs as therapy for organ failure. There is a chronic shortage of donors. The scarcity of organ donors to match any particular patient means that this therapy is rationed to those who offer the greatest chance for success.
In the not-too-distant future, patients facing organ failure might have the option of organs grown from their own stem cells. This is already possible for the replacement of noses or ears, grown on a template populated with donor cells. There is no particular ethical issue posed if this technology were to be extended to the growth of replacement hearts, kidneys, or livers.
Some clients of Merrick Biotech use their services for surrogate motherhood. We are not told the circumstances under which this procedure was used in the one case that we see, but the implication is that some women would pay $5 million for not having to carry their own pregnancies. Given that a woman can currently have eggs harvested to have a biological child through a surrogate mother for considerably less than that, we question the business model here more than the ethics, which we dismiss out of hand as horrific.
Summary. For raising these issues and provoking discussion, we give this film a middle-of-the-road rating of three hearts.
External reviews of The Island at IMdB