SURROGATES (review)

If ever there is a movie that has potential, it's the new Bruce Willis Sci-Fi Action movie Surrogates.

There's robots, cyborg science, James Cromwell (Star Trek: First Contact, Babe), evil organizations and Bruce Willis (Moonlighting).

Unfortunately, Surrogates takes this frothy brew and overdoes the spices to create a movie that is more convoluted than this entire metaphor.



Too many plot points tug at each other, so that none get well examined. Characters are introduced in a big way, only to have them fizzle away.

The movie takes place in a time when 98% of the world population sits at home using robot surrogates to go out and live their lives.

Choose whatever race, gender, or age that you like, connect to it through an internet-like mainframe via your brain, and let the games begin. As a result of this, violent crime has dropped nearly 99%.

If you assault a robot, is that a crime?

I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that if you assault a robot and that assault kills the user on the other end of the grid, a crime has been committed and Bruce Willis is a comin' for you.


So, Bruce Willis arrives and I think, "Here we go!"

Well, not really.

While his character FBI Agent Greer remains a constant in this chaotic story that has parents dealing with dead children, couples who are splitting apart, the everyman versus industry and many, many, other plot points, the character is Hollywood boring.

He uses a surrogate (Bruce Willis with his worst wig since 12 Monkeys) but he is longing to go out and live life in his own flesh and blood with his wife (Rosamund Pike) who could want nothing more opposite than that. If anything, she might want her corporeal body destroyed and her soul kept inside a CPU for transfer to another younger self. And this personal tug of war is a microcosm of the world in this movie.

CSI: Stupidity

Throughout different cities are reservations for people who want to live a surrogate free existence away from the overly image conscious surrogate users. When Greer goes to a “Rez” after his surrogate gets destroyed there while chasing a murder suspect, he is kicked and punched as a traitorous outsider. Ving Rhames portrays this purist group’s leader known only as the Prophet. As the group finishes their assault, he leans over with hands clasped together and asks how different it feels to be punched and kicked in the flesh. The rest of the movie, Rhames is shown mostly marching around making sure that his plans are seen through.

James Cromwell plays the scientist who designed the surrogates and started VSI, the company that sells them. As the movie is built upon the murder of his son while using one of Cromwell’s surrogates, he slips in and out of the film in several scenes that are nonsensical at best and poorly designed at worst. It’s a pity that he gets wasted treatment.

This is not the worst movie I have ever seen, but it could have been so much more.

So, I have to ask Hollywood to do me a favor: Stop overdoing plotlines to appeal to everybody.

Stop trying to create surrogates for us.

Oooo! Deep.