Surrogates
Surrogates
PG-13 | 25 September 2009 (USA)

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Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others' surrogates.

Reviews
hopetorley

Interesting movie. Bruce Willis in an unusual role. The man is multi-talented.

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bondguy77

this movie is a mess,i can honestly say, very disappointing considering bruce willis is in this.i was hoping for a great action packed scifi film that actually had a great plot,but was wrong,this is one of the worst films i have seen.this film is up and down on action sequences more down of course,it seemed as it tried to through a little action in just enough to keep you interested just to slow it back down.wouldn't recommend it.

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bowmanblue

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).

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darth-tobe

Science fiction is often used to illustrate current problems. So, this movie seems to be a modern retelling of the story of the land of Cockaigne. And like the medieval stories it heavy-handedly drives home the lesson about the Land of Plenty being a blessing and a curse.To start with, I liked the visual style, how the Surrogates look all polished and seem to correspond to how people would like to see themselves. I also liked the idea of anonymity, that - like Internet avatars - a Surrogate could be anyone and gives you no clue as to who is operating it. Interesting as these premises may be they quickly fell apart. There are so many things that do not seem to make sense, even within the plot's own world.Without giving away too much here are a few points that may also occur to you during the early parts of the film.If people depend on their Surrogates for everything, even household tasks, and hardly go out anymore why do their muscles not completely atrophy? Haven't they watched Wall-E?How could this advanced robotic technology and neural interfaces (Surrogates are thought controlled) have been developed within 14 years (as stated in the opening) and have become so cheap that the average Joe or Jane can afford them? And if so why is this technology not used for controlling other machines?Logically, for every new development there are those that oppose it. I thought they would be like everyone else just that they reject Surrogate technology. Why would they look like survivors of an apocalypse, live in abandoned building compounds, seemingly also reject all other technology and also be armed to the teeth and ready to go to war?And why does the main character have to be coping with some family tragedy only to illustrate that using Surrogates is bad for you?This was the list after about 20% of the film. Sadly it did not get any better. The science fiction setting has not been thought through. The murder mystery tries half-heartedly to be complex but offers few surprises and fails to deliver as little as a plausible motive. Characters just find clues because they do. In the end there is not even enough sci-fi action to support the film since Bruce Willis is not the youngest anymore and also plays a character who is very vulnerable among all the robots. Wait, does that not sound familiar? Actually, quite a number of elements seem to have been lifted straight from I, Robot. The inventor of the robots is even played by the same actor. Maybe that is it: go watch I, Robot instead.

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