"Why?" It's part Matrix, part Fugitive, even echoes of The Prisoner (although not anywhere that cerebral). Essentially the first third unfolds in a futuristic society where we learn that winning a lottery is the only chance you have of leaving this underground steel and glass city and moving to the only liveable piece of natural environment left in the world -- "the island".

Our hero is Lincoln (McGregor) who begins to suspect there's more to his world than what everyone is being told. It turns out he's right -- in fact, there is no island or future society, it's all a big hoax. Lincoln and his kind are actually clones. They're kept in this facility to act as spare parts whenever their uber-wealthy "sponsors" need a new set of lungs, or breasts, etc. Winning the lottery is in fact a death sentence. So Lincoln, along with his love interest Jordan (Johansson), manage to escape the facility and, with a little help, start a trek to Los Angeles to find his sponsor.(The sponsors themselves don't realize that their clones are living, breathing people; they think they're brain-dead blanks kept in status and unaware of everything.)

With his sponsor's help, Lincoln hopes, he can manage a way out of this. Naturally they are chased by goons sent by the facility's operators -- stock villains who want to keep their multi-billion-dollar secret a secret. All in all, pretty generic, deriative stuff. Certainly nothing to get excited about -- and probably no better than The Sixth Day, another forgettable flick. (Ok, so maybe Bay's explosions will be bigger).

McGregor steps in to Keanu's Neo-like role of wide-eyed innocent who discovers the world around him isn't what it seems. And for a while, there's the promise of perhaps something interesting in store for audiences, until it all turns into a very Fugitive-style cross-country chase. It will probably do OK box office -- the trailers will probably be mysterious enough to peak moviegoers' interest. But it's far too familiar territory to really catch on with audiences. If it comes out next summer, it will likely be clobbered by much better blockbusters, ranging from Batman Begins to Spielberg's War of the Worlds".

Thanks again to 'MTM'
Original posting appears on darkhorizons.com