"My name is Lincoln"

Immortality is hard to buy even when you are stinking rich in the present day. But this is prescisely the point on which the new sci-fi action adventure "The Island" fom Director Micheal Bay and Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is based on. In the not so distant future rich people take "Insurance" policies - An amount debited to a biomedical research company to clone themselves so that they can have replaceable "spares" when their original organs fail. The clones are then bred and brought up and when the need arises they are taken for harvesting by saying that they are being taken to an idllyic uncontaminated paradise - a Xanadu, called the "Island". The clones never venture out of the lab because it has been imprinted in their neural pathways that each one of them is the survivor of a nuclear disaster and the world outside is heavily contaminated with toxins. The trouble starts when a clone of the third generation called "Lincoln Six Echo" starts questioning his existence. His explorations around the nooks and corner of the lab allow him to find a living butterfly that has come inside the lab. He follows its path and sees the real thing that is going on outside the lab. It is later revealed that because of a flaw in the system the Echo generation of clones have advanced neural pathway development - They are evolving into humans establishing their own identities. L6E meets a beautiful girl called "Jordan 2 Delta" and out of sheer necessity (Jordan's sponsor meets with an accident) she is chosen by the insurance company to go to the "Island". How L6E rescues himself and J2D and frees the other clones forms the rest of the story.

The story's other interesting characters include the ultra-cool mercenary employed by the "Doctor" to hunt down L6E and J2D played by Djimon Hounsou (Of Amistad fame) and the Doctor who supports his actions saying that this is all a previlege for which the clients pay! Added to all this you have a Michael Bay style - "Mass Vehicular Carnage" and action sequences a'la Bad Boys II and the sound track scored by Steve Jabalaonsky make it the most watchable and interesting sci-fi action movies of the year post the debacle of the much hyped Steven Speilberg's "War of the Worlds".

Perhaps a flaw:

The sponsors (policy holders) do not know that their clones are living beings. They are just told that the clones live in a permanent vegitative state and will be harvested from when the need arises. What I cannot understand is the fact that in such an advanced age - about 30 years from now are people so ignorant as to believe this? The Lamarckian Theory of Evolution (Who proposed the concept of mutation) way back in the 19th century clearly states that mutations occur rapidly over generations in the genepool depending on the living conditions. For example Snakes when they were born had limbs like all other reptiles but since they were crawling using scales, legs were of no use - mere appendages and in subsequent generations lost them. No wonder legs can be seen only in Pythons albeit very very small! So if the clones were to be kept in vegetative state the organs would become useless and non-functioning because of "under work". Why did not anyone of the sponsors notice this flaw for so long a time? The Doctor notices this problem and so keeping the sponsors in the dark brings the clones to life!

Points to notice:

"msn" exists even in the year 2030!

The gang of mercenaries in pursuit of the clones is the usual Michael Bay gang of action figures who also starred in Bad Boys II - you can noticed the heavily moustached, completely bald guy in both movies.

The yatch in which L6E and J2D sail away at the climax is ironically named "Renovatio" which in latin means "Rebirth".