Michael Bay making a smart dystopian thriller? Yeah, I was skeptical when I heard about it too. And I still am. Though arguably Michael Bay's best film, The Island is a pastiche of dystopian tropes fascinating enough to include on this list, but not well-executed enough to work in the film itself. The Premise: Our ridiculously attractive protagonists (this is a Michael Bay film, after all) live in an isolated compound in the year 2019. The entire earth has been decimated save for one Island (or so the protagonists have been raised to believe). Every week a lottery is held and one of the occupants is chosen to leave the compound and go live on The Island. This seems like a pretty idilic utopia, until Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) discovers that the Lottery is an elaborate ruse disguising the truth: they are all clones of human counterparts bred to be organ donors. What follows is a series of poorly-executed action scenes that mess up the promise of this terrific setup. Though considered by many to be Michael Bay's best, it seems that it could have been a lot better if a more thoughtful director had the helm for this one.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
