"You know, I think there's a really good 90 minute movie in there... somewhere," Will Smith once said of Bad Boys 2.

Saddled with too many set pieces and the obligatory – but still irritating - slo-mo shots (one of which was simply Will putting a jacket on), Smith and director Michael Bay managed to kill off a lucrative franchise.

Lesson learned, Will followed up with I, Robot – a tighter, sci-fi based actioner which wowed audiences and critics alike.

Michael Bay, however, is the kind of guy that has no time for critics. Like Will, he's chosen a sci-fi actioner with story. Unlike Will, he’s kept all the elements that made Bad Boys 2 so, well, bad.

McGregor is Lincoln Six Echo, a man living in a sterile hospital-cum-prison facility in the mid-21st century.

Believing he and his fellow inmates are the last members of the human race, Lincoln and co. follow the orders of the superiors – led by Sean Bean's Doc with a God Complex, Merrick - without question.

That is until Lincoln begins to ask the right questions.

Far from being the last of the human race, the inmates are clones of the rich – created in case their owners need a spare arm, leg, liver or toe.

After discovering the horrifying truth, Lincoln rescues Scarlett Johansson's Jordan Two Delta and goes on the lam, with Djimon Hounsou’s ex-Black Ops mercenary hot on the trail.

Sure, it owes more than a nod to about 12 other films – Capricorn One, The Running Man, Minority Report to name but three – but a premise this interesting deserves your attention.

Unfortunately, between the intriguing start and the nicely rounded finish, Bay packs the second act with so many chase scenes that the plot becomes irrelevant - and despite not being restricted to Exec Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's sensibilities for the first time in his career, Bay still insists on those damned slo-mo shots of his stars appearing in Brut and Tampax adverts.

For a movie that is clearly half an hour too long, it's obvious the removal of at least two chase sequences would have made a considerable difference.

McGregor makes a fine leading man, Johansson enjoys playing her naïve clone immensely and Bean overacts as well as only Sean Bean can. The special effects are awesome, and the plot intriguing.

Sure, there are plot holes the size of a small country, but it's when Michael Bay is allowed to swing a camera round in ultra slo-mo with electric guitars screeching out for effect that any script will come a cropper - even one as good as this.

Simply put, had Bay been kept at bay, this Island would have been the place to be this summer.

Rich Phippen