Clones are big business in the future. Buy your own to supply the parts you require when sickness or injury threaten your life. The Island is a sci-fi action adventure set in the not-too-distant future, told from the viewpoint of two clones as they discover the truth of their existence and work to uncover corporate inhumanity.

Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta are clones living in a safe, controlled world among others of their kind. History tells the outside world is too contaminated for life outside the compound, with only one remaining island clean enough to support human life. The clones live their routine hoping to one day win the lottery and move to the island, where they can live out their lives under the sun. But it's all a lie fabricated to keep them controlled and hopeful, two things necessary for the products, their bodies, to remain healthy.

Why should you watch it?
The Island pushes the viewer to question the boundaries of science, human rights, and corporate ethics. Cloning is already possible, though there are flaws. Whether those flaws matter to someone facing a life-threatening situation is unlikely. An imperfect copy of your spleen might be better than one that is printed or vat-grown and is certainly better than doing without. There is already a market for body parts, so safe, healthy, near-perfect organs and limbs would certainly sell.

Human rights will need to be determined when cloning takes place. In a perfect world, a human is a human is a human, and even a vat-grown person would have full rights. The issue depicted in the movie holds up in the real world - if clones have rights, they can't be used as organ donors.

This takes us to the inevitable issues of corporate ethics. If we assume a cloning program would be expensive, they refer to a generation of clones valued at $200 million in the film, and thus profitable. (Major spoiler alert!) The failed promise in the film is that the clones are living in a dormant mode, with no awareness of any sort. When this attempt failed, the result was the compound with the controlled living conditions. The clones are alive, sentient, emotional humans in every way, except for a limited world-view.

This is a smart film that offers more than a few reflective moments among the explosions and races and holds up nearly a decade after it was released.

Topics Covered
Futurists will enjoy the topics explored in the movie, including:

• Cloning
• Bioethics
• Corporate ethics
• Human rights
• Human ownership
• Legality of killing human clones