The Island (2005 Film) - Plot

Plot

In the year 2019, Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta live in an isolated compound. The closed community is governed by a set of strict rules. The residents believe that the outer world has become too contaminated for human life with the exception of the titular island. Every week a "lottery" is conducted and the winner gets to go to the island. Lincoln however begins to have some problems and doubts which lead him to discover a sinister truth.

Lincoln starts having dreams, with memories that he knows are not real. Dr. Merrick, the founder of Merrick Biotech and the person running the compound, is disturbed and inserts probes into Lincoln's body to monitor his cerebral activities and to record what he sees for 24 hours. While secretly visiting a power-plant basement where his friend James McCord (a technician) works, Lincoln discovers a live moth in a ventilation shaft, leading him to deduce that the outside world is not contaminated. Lincoln follows the moth to another section, where he discovers that the "lottery" is actually a guise to kill the "winners" for organ harvesting, surrogate motherhood or other purposes. The organs or babies are given to sponsors, whose faces (and even DNA composition) match with the winners.

Merrick discovers that Lincoln has learned the truth, forcing Lincoln to escape. In the meanwhile, Jordan has been selected for the island. Lincoln escapes the facility along with Jordan, where they emerge in an Arizona desert. He explains the truth to her, and they realize that all the residents are clones of wealthy and/or desperate sponsors. Merrick's technology evolves the clones directly into adults, while keeping them ignorant or unable to cope with real world. Here, Merrick makes sales to more sponsors before the word gets out. He hires French mercenary Albert Laurent, admitting that the organs of unconscious clones inevitably fail, making them useless. Thus, he needs the clones conscious in the compound.

Lincoln and Jordan find McCord in a bar. McCord gives them the name of Lincoln's sponsor in Los Angeles, and helps them to the Yucca railway station, before being killed by the mercenaries. Jordan's sponsor, model Sarah Jordan, is in a coma because of a car accident. Lincoln's sponsor, Tom Lincoln, explains some of the situation, whereby Lincoln realizes that he has gained some of Tom's memories. Tom agrees to help expose the truth about the organ harvesting, but secretly informs Merrick about the situation by telephone. Merrick sends the mercenaries to the location, but Lincoln tricks Laurent into killing Tom, allowing him to assume Tom's identity.

Merrick decides to take action to avoid a similar incident from happening. He decides to eliminate the four newest generations of clones as they all seem to be affected by the same cloning defect. Lincoln and Jordan plan to liberate their fellow clones. Posing as Tom, Lincoln returns to the compound in order to destroy the holographic projectors that hide the outside world from the clones. With help from Laurent, who has moral qualms about the treatment given to the clones, Merrick is killed and the clones are freed. The film ends with the clones seeing the outside world for the first time. One can also see that Jordan and Lincoln have developed their very own personalities. In the final scene they were riding on a boat happily.