Donny Recommends: The Island (2005)

Time to have a movie recommendation for my readers. For me I don't really like to see those holiday movies where everything was either 'BAM!', 'WOOSH!' or 'SPLAT!'. It doesn't serve any purpose for me, and I sometimes even find it revolting just to watch with my friends where they were simply watching it for the explosions and actions. Well, not for me. I paid tremendous attention to the plot and the meaning behind films so that makes me usually watch it either with one or two friends, or even alone. Sad? Not really, I'm just enjoying the time spent with myself.

Poster of The Island

Enough with the crap, let me introduce this movie The Island. The Island is a science fiction movie about an apparently futuristic compound with people living in it. The people there were told that the outside world was contaminated and therefore they have to follow a very strict regulations in there, from daily diet to social relationships in order to regulate the population and breed.

However the protagonist of the film, Lincoln Six Echo, did not feel competent with the situation he is in, plus more evidence that made him know probably the world outside was different from what they were told to be. So he investigates.

Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson)

One of the main subplot of this film was the Island lottery, where everyone will have a chance to win and escape from the isolated compound. People in there were really anticipating that one day it will be one of them to win the prize. However, behind this so-called lucky draw, it was actually a myth, and Lincoln found out the people inhabited in the compound were actually clones of real people of the 'outside' world, where wealthy people sponsored to clone their body and once ever they have body parts malfunctioning, they can harvest the clone's body and no one will know it. And the lucky draw's use was exactly for that.

As Lincoln found out more and more about this immoral doing of this company which told the sponsors and the government the cloned parts were do not gain consciousness, so he escaped with Jordan Two Delta, a friend who has just won the lottery and try to find their sponsors.

Cloned human fed with fake memories

This movie is really reflecting about the ethics of cloning and it gives me an interesting view on what if this really happens in the future where body parts are simply genetically grown and be transplant into dying people's body. It's a sad to see so many people are being killed just to replace body parts and yet they never know that the so-called lottery was the final destination of their lives where they are being harvested. One scene, where a pregnant woman has won the lottery as she started to labour, and as Lincoln followed the medical staff that escorted her into the surgery room, he found out after she gave birth to a baby, she was instantly injected with toxins and killed in the spot, where the baby was given to a wealthy family. That was really screwed up.

So, I do recommend this film to everyone who wants to have a special perspective about human and their cruelty, not to mention that selfishness and the contrastive morals towards the other kinds of people.



D.