If you believe that one explosion is good but two are better, then you’ll like this film much more than I did. From its opening scene, The Island gives the impression of a good-looking movie with beautiful cinematography and sharp-looking, futuristic sets, but it promises much that it doesn’t deliver, and after half an hour of introducing the characters and setting up the story it degenerates into a stupid chase film and never recovers.

Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson play two people in love who live in a strange apocalyptic world in which they are sheltered in a large complex surrounded by mountains and blue ocean. Not allowed to go outside because of the "contamination," they await their turn to go to The Island, where they will begin to repopulate the Earth. What they don’t know is that Earth is fine -- "going to The Island" means that their bodies will be harvested for organs because they are, in fact, clones of real people living on the outside. (I’m not giving anything away; the damn movie trailer I saw last week told me this and ruined any mystery for me.) But McGregor’s character suspects that all is not as it seems. After sneaking around, he learns that there is no Island and that he and his love are to be killed. The couple escapes and the chase is on.

Sean Bean plays the main bad guy, Merrick, who runs the complex, the whole corporation, and does double duty as the clones’ psychiatrist. He hires Albert Laurent (Djimon Hounsou) and his crack team of Navy SEALs to hunt down the fleeing couple so as to keep the complex a secret. However, the SEALs are so incompetent that their efforts to keep the complex a secret destroy half of futuristic L.A. Forgive me -- I exaggerate. They kill or maim 20 or so L.A. cops, demolish perhaps 25 cars, drive a flying Skidoo through a train, then through a building, etc., etc. -- you get the point.

Steve Buscemi is McCord, an outside worker who helps McGregor and Johansson and explains to them what they are. His character and lines are embarrassing, his role thankfully small.

Still, there are good things to say about The Island. McGregor and Johansson are a winning couple. You root for them and hope they succeed, and when they nail a bad guy, they really nail him. There is some satisfaction in watching evildoers suffer.

But the film could have been so much better. Little effort is made to acquaint us with the future -- we are given no idea of how society might evolve in the next 50 to 70 years. In fact, the only reason for setting the story in the future is to give credibility to the advances in cloning. For a more interesting view of the near future, rent Spielberg’s Minority Report. Don’t waste your money on this one.

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