"The Island" starts out as a passably good sci-fi flick.

Then it turns into a Michael Bay movie.

A Michael Bay movie is by definition good looking, dramatically suspect and action oriented.

The first hour or so of "The Island" is set in a hermetically sealed futuristic complex where hundreds of men and women wear identical outfits, work high tech jobs, are forbidden to have sex and await each day's lottery announcement.

Lottery winners get a trip to The Island, a tropical paradise untouched by the environmental disaster that made the rest of Earth uninhabitable.

Except there is no Island. These people are clones, replicas of wealthy people who need replacement parts. Winning the lottery means a trip to the dissection lab, not an eternity at Club Med.

At first Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) has no idea that he's a clone. A curious sort given to exploring off-limit areas of the complex, Lincoln discovers that he was grown in a big plastic placenta, implanted with phony memories and is destined to become an organ donor.

So he makes a break with his friend Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson). Once outside they realize they've been prisoners in a subterranean complex beneath the Mojave Desert. Now, pursued by bounty hunters dispatched by the evil Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean), they make their way to Los Angeles because ... well, I've forgotten why, although it probably has something to do with the L.A. freeway system, which allows Bay to stage a mind-blowing chase.

Once in the City of Angels, the two fugitives manage to elude their pursuers (incompetent biker types led by Djimon Hounsou) and survive one close call after another.

We're told Lincoln and Jordan are only 3 years old and have been implanted with the intellects of 15-year-olds. Nevertheless, they effortlessly navigate the city, avoiding capture, commandeering cars and jet cycles and accessing complex communications systems. Oh, and they discover sex.

"The Island" echoes so many other movies you could do a graduate thesis on the sources raided by Bay and his screenwriters.

McGregor and Johannson are talented, charismatic performers, but their characters are essentially blank slates and not very interesting. You could do a pretty good movie just about the learning curve of artificial humans thrust into an unfamiliar environment ... but this isn't it.