Surrogates

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Year:	2009
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Jonathan Mostow
Genre:	Average sci-fi thriller
Starring:	Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/
Tagline:	How do you save humanity when the only thing that's real is you?
Favourite line:	"We're not meant to experience the world through a machine."

Bruce Willis in paranoid sci-fi thriller.

The plot:
It’s the near future, and a new technological development has led to a dramatic change in society. Humans, instead of existing in the real world, remain at home, and use ‘surrogates’ to exist for them, seeing the world through the surrogates’ eyes. Surrogates are robots. Advanced, perfect human-form robots. Incapable of ageing, dying, catching or spreading disease, it is an apparent utopia, though one experienced vicariously.
When a series of deaths seems to indicate that the technology may not be as fool-proof as previously thought, Willis’ Greer must shed the surrogate, and enter the real world in person, for the first time in years….

It’s a decent set-up, a proper sci-fi concept.
Bruce is very well cast as the jaded, emotionally troubled cop on the case of a potential murderer, the make-up used to age and de-age him, depending on whether we are viewing his true self or his surrogate self, is effective enough.
In tone, this feels like a mash-up of Total Recall and Gattaca, with perhaps a touch of In Time, and a sprinkling of Robocop.
Verhoeven was clearly an influence.
Yet, somehow, it doesn’t quite hang together.
Though entertaining enough, you are left feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Whether it needed a shade more violence, to add that edge of darkness, I’m not sure. The tone was bleak, certainly, but it just lacked that punchy something to carry it from good enough to very good indeed. That being said, I did watch the BBC transmitted version, so Christ knows if bits and pieces of ‘adult content’ were shorn from the edit. Wouldn’t want to upset people with mature
themes and images in a movie broadcast at eleven o’clock at night.
Dumb fuckers.
Having received atrocious reviews upon cinema release, I went into this vaguely optimistic, which may seem contrary, but I simply never trust the reviews of sci-fi movies. Critics are way too sniffy and judgemental when it comes to science fiction, as it seems most of them just don’t get it. Look at John Carter earlier this year. Panned by critics, so ignored by the mainstream audience, but it was a perfectly decent sci-fi adventure romp.
Anyway, I digress.
An interesting concept, this, simply not delivered with any real conviction, giving the feel of a rather confused project.
Still, sci-fi fans could check it out. You’ll probably enjoy it, reasonably.