10 Action Movies That Looked Awesome But Sucked

The Island is the movie that best exposes Michael Bay’s weaknesses as a storyteller: there’s a neat idea at the core of the film (clones are grown as an “insurance policy” to help the rich cheat death), but Bay is far less interested in story and character than he is in explosions and flashy visuals. For bad measure, he also adds his trademark mean humour, including a “hilarious” moment where Ewan McGregor and Steve Buscemi are mistaken for lovers.

Once the plot has been established, The Island turns into every other Michael Bay movie you’ve ever seen, full of sound and fury and product placement. The second half of the film is a succession of increasingly unbelievable action scenes, and for saying the characters have spent their entire life in an underground facility, they’re remarkably adept at outrunning trained soldiers.

Every once in a while, the film stops dead so that former Commercial Director Of The Year Bay can shoehorn in a product placement for Xbox or – most intrusively of all – Calvin Klein. In a sequence guaranteed to elicit groans, Scarlett Johansson, who’s supposed to be running for her life, stops to watch her own Klein commercial on TV.