Films

There's a very good 90-minute thriller inside The Island. Shame the film's 136 minutes long. Still, there's plenty to enjoy in the more intimate, character-based moments, if you can cope with the relentlessly overblown action that surrounds them. Ewan McGregor is excellent as a worker in a sealed futuristic city who begins to think there must be more to life. Such thinking nearly gets him killed, as he goes on the run with Scarlett Johansson to uncover a giant conspiracy.

It's fairly obvious things aren't right from early on. For a start, the city's head honcho is Sean Bean. Dressed in black. And the glitzy lottery, which promises winners life on Earth's last uncontaminated spot, The Island, is advertised with phrases like, "Your time will come". This is what passes for subtlety in a Michael Bay film. But for all the critical snobbery around the Pearl Harbor director, he has an eye for the spectacular (Michael Clarke Duncan's rib-crunching hospital touchdown) and the funny (McGregor doing double-time in a car. You'll see).

"BORES WITH ITS BOMBAST"

The pity is he hasn't enough confidence to keep things simple and short. Afraid of losing the audience's attention, he amps up chase after chase in a middle section that ODs on helicopters and bores with its bombast. Also, like Tarantino, Bay is a filmmaker primarily influenced by other films, rather than life. Every highlight feels familiar (with influences from THX 1138, to The Matrix and to his own Bad Boys II). There's no danger of real emotion in this Brave New World.