Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Whitech It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

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

Leofwine_draca I'm a sucker for Bruce Willis movies. I also admit that I'm a fan of director Jonathan Mostow; his movies, such as TERMINATOR 3, might not be favourites, but he always seems to know how to deliver intense thrills and decent action. When I saw the two were combining for this science fiction thriller which looked a lot like I, ROBOT, I was delighted. What guy doesn't like robots and the intriguing possibilities they pose in film? Thankfully, the movie is a darned sight better than that idiotic Will Smith outing, but it's true to say that it's no classic. The main problem with SURROGATES is the uneasy combination of a thinking man's plot with the necessity to appeal to 13 year old boys. Thus, we get a thought-provoking, half-baked plot about mankind's reliance on artificial help and the increasing agoraphobia faced by the laptop generation combined with some fairly run-of-the-mill thrills and spills of a typical thriller. This is an incredibly short film, and neither the plot nor the action are developed very much.That's not to say it's not entertaining – because it is. Bruce Willis is reliable in an emotional turn, and he gets fine support from Rosamund Pike, Radha Mitchell, and Boris Kodjoe, with minor turns from the imposing Ving Rhames and the impossibly ancient James Cromwell. The film LOOKS good, thanks to Mostow and director of photography Oliver Wood, who's been creating fine-looking films ever since DIE HARD 2 (his Bourne trilogy being a standout). The film has a heart-string tugging central relationship all about loss, grief, and love which gives it an extra dimension over many a lunkheaded shooter.There are elements of I, ROBOT and THE MATRIX in the storyline, but the themes behind the thrills are far more interesting than the face-value plot. I also loved the creepy look of the surrogates themselves; they seemed to me to be a natural progression of the plastic surgery craze that's been accepted in Hollywood for too many years. Okay, this isn't a great film, but the well-crafted action and strong central performance make it more than watchable.

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.

Spikeopath 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