Bay injects Island with action

HEAR IT NOW Audio: Clips from the Chronicle's interview with Djimon Hounsou: • On The Island's implausibilities vs. its serious issue • On his favorite genres to act in • On Gladiator 2 rumors Requires the free RealPlayer SEE IT NOW • Watch the Island trailer • Visit the Web site

'The Island' premiere, July 11, New York 1/7 Getty Images Michael Bay and Scarlett Johansson

But The Island also is set in "movie world" — a world where ordinary folks, when pressed, can become gun-wielding, jet-biking, sabotaging experts of quick-thinking action. Even worse, it's a movie world run by Michael Bay.

A maligned director of blaring action hits, Bay, at least, is consistent. He's turned prison breaks (The Rock), space rescues (Armageddon) and buddy-cop flicks (Bad Boys) into the same brand of noisy, mindless, over-the-top action. Sure, it's all dumb spectacle, but spectacle sells.

The Island didn't have to be this way. Its tale was more tame and thoughtful when Steven Spielberg, having done the related Artificial Intelligence, pitched it to Bay. But Bay, being Bay, punched it up, hiring script doctors to mainline some action.

Not that The Island ever was that original. It bobs on a crowded sci-fi sea, whose archipelago stretches from Coma, 1984 and THX 1138 to Blade Runner, Logan's Run, The Clonus Horror and a '60s Outer Limits episode called "The Duplicate Man."

But in The Island, body doubles and human harvests are just the setup — an excuse for Bay to do what he does best: crash, smash and trash.

Yet it opens with quiet enticement, as Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) awakes from a dream. He lives among docile, uniformed, brainwashed types who believe global contamination forced their confinement in a massive underground colony.

These dulled denizens dutifully report for assembly-line work and mild play. Their big hope is that they'll win a lottery and be taken to "the island," an oasis on the outside. But Lincoln learns there's no such place. Ecstatic "winners" are hustled to dark operating rooms, their organs ripped out for rich customers from whom they were cloned.

Miraculously, Lincoln and friend Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) escape. This sparks a frantic hunt to eliminate them before they alert the world.

Clones, you see, aren't supposed to be full-grown, thinking, feeling humans, but mere organ vessels. Ambitious but amoral scientist Merrick (Sean Bean) must keep that a secret.

Bay handles this setup with humor and humanism, from the clones' nutty naivete to their merciless slaughter as "product." But when the DNA hits the fan, he just can't help himself.

Forget moral dilemmas and conspiratorial intrigue. The Island becomes just another chase-and-destroy romp — an onslaught of action-violence that's impressive only for its sheer grandiosity.

In "Michael Bay's world," credibility can't slow the action. So a $120 billion facility has a 20-cent security system and an Achilles Heel worse than the original Death Star.

McGregor seems lost playing a smart-dumb odd bird, but as a clone, the poor wretch, we'll cut him slack. Less embittered than avid and impatient, he has a comical if pitiable thirst for everyday sensation.

Fittingly, Johansson is more of a blank slate — until danger makes her an instant warrior. But ignore the hype. The clueless clones aren't sexy; that's been programmed out of them.

Steve Buscemi steals the show as a gabby grease-monkey toiling in the facility's bowels. A grounded voice of comic reason, he teases Lincoln and Jordan about their newbie awkwardness — at least until they go James Bond on us and push the pedal to the action metal.

Let's just hope Bay doesn't get his hands on that franchise.