Michael Bay is a master of wringing dumb, noisy movies out of intriguing premises.
Whether it's an epic recreation of the attack on the United States by Japan in December 1941 (Pearl Harbor), a doomsday scenario involving a giant asteroid hurtling towards Earth (Armageddon), or the threat posed by terrorists armed with chemical weapons (The Rock), no one has appealed to the multiplex masses quite so blatantly and successfully as Bay.
However, audiences are a fickle bunch.
And so it seems with The Island, a big budget flick which uses timely concerns about genetic cloning as a catalyst for Bay's trademark brand of carnage and outrageous pyrotechnics.
US box office receipts seem to suggest someone has lost his Midas touch. Or maybe audiences have finally stopped checking their brains in at the door.
Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) is one of hundreds of residents of a 21st Century, utopian facility in which every facet of the environment is carefully monitored and controlled by institute head Merrick and his team.
The abiding hope of every resident is to be chosen to visit to The Island, the fabled last uncontaminated spot on the planet.
Lincoln makes a shocking chance discovery that casts a shadow over his existence and reveals he is worth far more dead than alive.
Launching a desperate rescue bid in tandem with beautiful fellow resident Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson), Lincoln heads into the alien and unforgiving outside world, with bounty hunter Albert Laurent and his henchmen in hot pursuit.
The Island looks incredible and Bay orchestrates lots of bang for your buck. But while the film certainly puts the pedal to the metal, there's not a great deal of intelligence underpinning the spectacle.
