Surrogates (2009)

Just perfect...

hyped garbage

good back-story, and good acting

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Surrogates has a very interesting premise, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere. Even the twists and turns are fairly mundane. In the end, it was a fun ride, but this movie is ultimately forgettable.

Yeah, I know, Bruce Willis may be a bit past his sell-by date. He's hardly the box office draw he once was. And, yes, he does tend to exhibit a noticeable sneer/smirk throughout most of his most recent roles, but give him a chance here. He's not so bad.Surrogates set in the future when we all have robots to carry out our menial chores – all of apart from wise-cracking cop, played by Will Smith, who is hell-bent on proving that our robot 'protectors' are not what they seem. Oh, wait, that's not the plot for Surrogates at all – that's the plot for 'I Robot.' Never mind – just take out the word 'robots' and replace it with, er, 'surrogates' (which are basically robots) and you have the storyline.If you haven't seen I Robot, Surrogates may be quite original, but I couldn't believe how similar the two were. But I still enjoyed it. I put in my review title that it was a competent LITTLE sci-fi number. That's largely because it's quite short for a film – coming in well below the average hour and a half. And, because of this, it's over pretty quickly, almost like a TV episode of some sci-fi show.It has action, conspiracy, reasonably special effects and Bruce Willis isn't that annoying. In fact, his – how should I put this – 'mature' action hero status actually works here. The human race all have (surrogate) robots shaped like them who go out into the world under their human master's control. Naturally, everyone's surrogate is young and gorgeous while their human owner's body gets older and flabby from the comfort of their home. It's quite amusing when Bruce's beautiful bot gets beaten up and the 'real' human Bruce has to go out onto the streets with his bald head and wrinkles for all to see.All of this means that if you're a fan of the sci-fi genre you should get something out of this film. It's one of those films that you like more if you haven't had to pay for. If you can borrow it off a mate or find it as part of your online TV package, give it a go. It will definitely kill just over an hour of your time, but you probably wouldn't have wanted to pay full price in the cinema to see it. Oh, and it's also advisable not to watch I Robot before you see this (it's definitely superior – sorry, Bruce).

This could have been a really good movie, but it was doomed by fractured characterizations and a terrible script. What the viewer was left with was a below par Bruce Willis action movie plus a great sci-fi premise. The 'world' that was created was very well done, undoubtedly the best part of the film. Anyone familiar with our current virtual worlds and avatars would have felt chills seeing a world that is currently safely inside their computers suddenly brought into real life. Thus this is a very plausible situation. People NOW, in real life, currently sit for hours on end, 'living' in these virtual worlds, 'being' their avatar. Anyone unfamiliar with virtual worlds would be shocked at how close this scenario could be for us in the near future. Besides that, the movie was difficult to get through and I almost gave up many times. And I was never really vested in the characters and bad script. The good news is that real sci-fi is becoming more and more common in movies, which is a great thing for sci-fi fans, for it is a genre which has mostly been ignored or 'pulped', ridiculously, over the entire lifetime of film. Sure, not all films with good sci-fi premises will be good, but at least the genre is opening up. Unless you are a die hard (pun intended) Bruce Willis fan, the only reason to watch this movie is for Ving Rhames (who has way too little screen time) and to check out the world that was created here, which is the only reason I gave it a 6 rating. Without all that, and if this had been a present day cop movie, it would be have been better to turn on the TV and just watch CSI (maybe the best idea, anyway). Oh, and did I mention the ending was completely expected and cliché, and rather truncated? It left me with a rather empty stomach.

I first viewed Surrogates upon its home format release and positively found it very ordinary. Viewing it again, with focus and in solitude, it proved to be a far better experience.The action scenes are what you would expect for a multi-plex appeasing popcorner, loud, colourful and owing great debt to modern technology. Yet to dismiss this totally as one of those easy money making blockbuster movies is most unfair.Surrogates oozes intrigue, even if it doesn't quite deliver on the smartness written on the page. The idea that in the future robotic alter egos can carry out our everyday mundane functions is cracker-jack, and it opens up a whole can of berserker worms. This is not merely an excuse to have Bruce Willis running around exploding surrogate robots, as much fun as that is of course, there's a deeper emotional core pulsing away as Willis fights the good fight to make sure being human is not cast aside like a thing of the past, that as flawed as we are, hiding away in a surrogate is not the answer.This axis of the story is beautifully realised by the plot strand involving Willis and Rosamund Pike as his wife, with both actors doing fine work to give it the required emotional heft. It may ultimately lose itself to a standard conspiracy plot, but there's intelligence within to make Surrogates a better film than it first appears. 7/10