Surrogates

Surrogates

Surrogates - Directed by Jonathan Mostow, starring Bruce Willis, James Cromwell, Radha Mitchell, and Ving Rhames - Rated PG-13



Surrogates isn't perfect (it's far from it, actually), but it's good enough for The Evil Kurgan.



Surrogates, Bruce Willis’ latest, is an entertaining, yet unoriginal and problematic, sci-fi film. It takes place about fifteen years in the future, where robotic surrogates handle the day to day life for 99% of the world’s population, while their owners control them from their homes. Think of the world like a live action chat room, where everyone can choose what they look like.

First off, if you liked I, Robot, then you’ll probably like Surrogates. The similarities between the two films delve into rip off territory. There is a giant corporation that owns and distributes all of the surrogates. There is an unlikely murder that could topple the entire system. The main character doesn’t like the way the surrogates have changed the world. The most glaring similarity, however, is a casting decision. James Cromwell, who played the father of robotics in I, Robot, basically plays the same character in Surrogates. It’s impossible to ignore the connections.

Unoriginality aside, the film does not hold up well under close scrutiny. To start, that 99% statistic is quite ridiculous. Surrogates are not free or given out by the government. Are we to believe that almost everyone in the world can afford even a low end model of a surrogate? I somehow doubt that third world countries faced with massive poverty and starvation would be able to embrace the surrogate lifestyle.

On top of the 99% stat the film also makes the claim that crime has nearly disappeared. I’m sorry if this sounds cynical, but I think that if people were able to live their lives through robotic entities they would be more likely to engage in illegal activities, since morality would go out the window with some people since actual humans aren’t being harmed.





I could go into more and more problems with the scenario of the film, but there is one more issue I need to point out. Ving Rhames, who plays an anti-surrogate human rights leader, already has a goofy look (the usually bald actor sports a massive beard and dreadlocks) but every time he speaks, even when he’s giving a radio address, he holds his hands up like Ricky Bobby during his first interview in Talladega Nights. When you see it, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Because of that, I just could not take his character seriously.

Even with these issues, I still liked this film. I’m a fan of Bruce Willis and he does his beat-up hero thing here. It’s nothing new and I’m fine with that. No one pulls off the bloodied and grizzled look better than Willis.

But Willis doesn’t start off grizzled. Like everyone else in the film, he has a surrogate. The surrogate looks a bit shiny and fake (and the hair looks kind of out of place) and he is clean cut, with no imperfections to be seen. And that is the look of the film, which is unsettling, in a good way. Everyone looks like they are straight off a runway, dressed in the finest clothing. While their operators look haggard, never leaving the house.




This presents, as most sci-fi films do, some social commentary. In this case, the question asked is: What constitutes life? Surrogates make things easier and everyone is beautiful, so why should you ever leave the house? This could be applied to today’s culture in a way. The separate lives that people live on the internet in social applications and chat rooms. At what point is the line crossed? At what point to people accept Facebook and MySpace as a substitute for actual socialization? Is this really that serious of a problem? Probably not. But a good sci-fi movie makes you at least consider where our current society could end up.

Surrogates presents a possible future to a ridiculous scale that could have been fixed by just saying the United States had embraced surrogates, or at least drop the percentage down to a more realistic number. Seriously, even the internet is not used by 99% of the population. So if you can’t afford internet service, how are you going to afford your own robot? I mention the statistic problem again because it hurts any meaning the film tries to present.

I was able to ignore the faults for the most part and I found Surrogates to be entertaining. The style of the film helps out a bit as well. The short runtime (88 minutes) was nice as well since these types of movies can get bloated. Surrogates is a good film, but if the screenwriters had spent more time thinking about the world they were creating, then they could’ve ended up with a great film.

Eric Harris - www.canneltoncritic.com

Last updated: 2010-05-10 10:43:04 by user06

Surrogates: Much Better Options Than This

Surrogates
 
Surrogates follows a predictable path that lacks almost any semblance of suspense.  The movie is based on a comic called The Surrogates by Robert Venditti and doesn’t seem to capture any of that feel.   Jonathon Mostow brings the same sort of bland and uninteresting character development skills he used on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines to this one.
 
The movie centers around the world of 2054 where nearly everyone in the world uses robots called Surrogates.  People use these machines, which are essentially androids, to live out their fantasies.  Venditti, who didn’t write the screenplay, meant this to be analogous to people creating alternate personas on the internet.  The owner of the machine can feel all the pleasure and positive experiences the Surrogate does and none of the pain.  As a result of the widespread use of these machines crime rates have dropped massively.
 
The problems begin when two people are killed by a weapon that can destroy the Surrogate along with its operator.  You’re probably saying to yourself, “Oh no! But that would defeat the whole purpose of Surrogacy and ruin a Utopian society!”  That’s about as sincere a response as I could muster.  Detective Tom Greer, Bruce Willis, must unravel the mystery before anyone else gets hurt.  What complicates matters even more is that one of the victims is the son of the creator of Surrogacy, Canter Surrogate.
 
There are just way too many problems with the plot.  There are relatively no cliff hangers because we’ve simply seen this before and done better.  Movies like Minority Report and iRobot (which also stars James Francis Ginty as the creator of a helper robot system) handle these social commentaries with much more style and complexity.  Even the least savvy investigator will be able to unravel this case well before it gets closed.
 
Another big problem is that there are no characters we really get involved with.  A major lesson of the movie is that the use of Surrogates allows people to get too submersed in a fantasy world and they no longer can have meaningful relationships.  In the film this seems more like an excuse for half-assed acting as no one besides Willis or Ginty spends any sort of considerable time not being a plastic hollow Surrogate.  Greer’s relationship with his wife is supposed to be a microcosm of this social problem, but really we don’t care.  The Surrogates are just downright creepy and boring.
 
The predictability of the movie also takes away from the action.  Every twist can be anticipated which takes all the suspense out of the action and renders the film virtually useless.  It’s still satisfying at some points simply because Willis is an accomplished action actor and if he was chasing a cute fluffy bunny he could make it enjoyable to watch, actually I think I might have preferred that.
 
 
 
 

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Recommendations: Shutter Island, District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009), Morning Glory

Last updated: 2010-04-12 19:05:23 by jpgreenb

Surrogates

Presumably Bruce Willis saw something in this Sci-Fi graphic novel adaptation that's lost on the rest of us. Far better suited to the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean-Claude Van Damme (whatever happened to him?), Surrogates is the kind of B-movie trash that Willis has spent half his career trying to avoid.

It's certainly no Die Hard - it barely even matches up to Armageddon.

The Sci-Fi world it inhabits is intriguing enough, and one can only assume that this was enough to get Willis on board. In 2017 the world as we know it has changed, thanks to the invention of remote-controlled robotic ''surrogates" that allow their users to stay at home, while experiencing the outside world through their remarkably realistic avatars (much like the "nanite" technology in recent action movie Gamer - clearly these ideas come in pairs).

Instead of risking those danger-fraught steps outside your front door, you can just lie back and plug in, controlling your surrogate as if they were an extension of your real self. The best part is, they're disposable and easily replaceable - when one gets trashed, you simply plug in to another one. Life on the couch may look dull, but at least it's risk-free.

That's how the system's supposed to work, anyway. When the owners of two surrogates die at the same time as their robots, the FBI are called in to investigate, in the form of Tom Greer (Willis) and Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell). Of course, the real Greer and Peters are still little more than plugged-in couch potatoes.

They discover that a weapon exists that can kill surrogates and owners alike, and before you know it Greer has lost his own robotic doppelganger and is forced to venture out into the world without the security of his lookalike hardware. The trail leads him to The Prophet (Ving Rhames), an anti-surrogate campaigner who has been gaining in popularity, as well as to Dr. Lionel Canter (James Cromwell), the inventor of the surrogate technology.

If this all sounds very intriguing then don't be fooled - Surrogates seems happy to abandon most of its ethical dilemmas and pseudo-science at the door, instead prefering to take a trashy action movie route. Why ask difficult questions about the nature of human experience when you can have a car chase instead?

It doesn't help that most of the characters are actually robotic surrogates, complete with blank expressions and wooden acting. In a regular movie you'd just think that the entire cast was either stoned or hopelessly talentless, but the fact that they're intentionally acting badly here doesn't alleviate any of the pain. They may be realistic depictions of emotionless robots, but it still doesn't make for entertaining viewing.

Willis does his best as the heart and soul of the movie (even under that appalling wig), but it's tough being the one substantial role in a film full of cardboard cutouts. Even the action sequences feel hollow and dull when the participants have all the emotional range of a vacuum cleaner.

All of which would, of course, have made Surrogates the perfect vehicle for Schwarzenegger or Van Damme. Willis should have known better, though.

Booze Revooze: A Drinker’s Skewed Review of SURROGATES

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Al K Hall<br />
Functional Alcoholic Slurperson<br />
(No, REALLY. Google &amp;quot;Slurperson&amp;quot; if you don't believe me.)

Last updated: 2010-04-04 17:34:07 by user08

Surrogates

How can I stop this? Leave the theater, yes, the real you, not the robotic you. Leave the theater to the robotic actors. Leave now, save humanity!  Are you listening?

One Word Review: SAD

Imagine a world where you never leave you easy chair, not even to pick up the remote control.  A world full of robots more attractive, more athletic and more virtuous than you’ll ever be. No crime, no garbage, no accidents because everyone is sitting at home on their ass living through their machine. Now this is an extension of the world we all live in via television, the Internet and the many versions of virtual reality exploding around us every day, from our text conversations to our avatars in Second Life. Now we have Surrogates, an exploration of our separation from ourselves through expanded use of technology which, as we have all learned from many Hollywood movies, can go terribly wrong.

Not to worry, because the thing that goes terribly wrong in this movie is the movie itself. We have the BIG idea of surrogate robots living our perfect life and then we have the LITTLE idea of a FBI agent who’s lost his son, misses him terribly every time he sees the kid’s baseball glove and the parallels between his loss and that of a megalomaniac inventor out to save mankind by killing everyone on the planet.

In 1974, the philosopher Robert Nozick proposed an “experience machine” where you could be hooked up to a box which stimulated your brain to replicate any experience you desired. You would not be able to distinguish this artificial sensation from the real thing. He wondered if anyone would want to hook up to such a thing and if so, what else would we be missing?  Surrogates answers this dilemma in the positive, picturing a society eager to hook up to the robot experience and not feel deprived of real life at all. It could be argued that if we are all dedicated to “the pursuit of happiness”, then this surrogate living achieves our goal without any of life’s frustrations and annoying failures.

However, if you believe a life worth living should include real life experiences of frustration and annoying failures, go see this movie.

The Story

The story is silly, contrived and one-dimensional as Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) tries to solve the first murder in ages. The inventor of the surrogate has a son who is killed while connected to an “off-the-grid” robot. From there we dive into the reservation where “meatbags” (people who choose to walk around in their own bodies) have been contained. They are led by the Prophet who doesn’t think people should have a choice how they want to live their lives.

The VSI (Virtual Self Industries) corporation has helped the military build a weapon to destroy surrogate soldiers and this becomes the prize everyone wants to control. Who will get it and what they plan to do with it fills up the plot for about an hour, not that we care if everyone in their lazy chairs gets fried or not.

The Genre

The sci-fi fantasy genre is obsessed with the dangers of technology and the horrors of convenience delivered by smart devices which make everyday life easier, smarter and faster.  It’s getting tired and obviously out of sync with how we live our lives every day.

Surrogates is really an updated Stepford Wives/Westworld where the entire city is a fantasy land dependent on robots and how they are controlled. In reality, it seems terribly inefficient to actually create robots that walk around real streets when we can create the street, the people, the sky and the rain with virtual reality. Oh, that was the Matrix; much more efficient and without the need for power stations to charge up the robot’s batteries.

The Overall Quality

The beauty of actors playing robot versions of their characters is like asking fish to swim. They do it so naturally in other movies so they’re really moving into their comfort zone here. Robots getting smashed and de-faced so we can see their inner gears and metal parts is an old effect trotted out once more. Toss in some chases and explosions and oh, sorry, I was nodding off there for a minute…

Movie/Market Analysis

MarketBOB’s sentiment indicators, the GQS (Genre, Quality, Story) makes Surrogates a BEAR movie. The story is depressing, our human desire for happiness perverted to choosing the “experience machine” over reality and large corporations again take the role of the bad guy. As investors now realize, if you hand off your investments to a surrogate, you will suffer pain and suffering while the insiders make huge fees and bonuses at our expense. All in all, a negative experience and a BEAR signal for the market.

The Surrogates

Starring: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell
Sci Fi, 2009 (Rated PG-13)

Welcome to the future where humans can't be bothered to actually live their own lives risking injury or death and instead send surrogates out into the world who are genetically engineered to look perfect while they sit at home hooked up to a chair. The world is divided by those who use surrogates and those who don't. When a high profile "operator" ends up dying when his surrogate is struck by a car FBI agent Greer must find out why.

• I have to be honest and I say that while I loved this story line and concept for a movie I kind of have no idea what the heck happened.
• I have a tendency to get lost in moves with super intricate plots and that's exactly what happened here.
• I love the concept though. Imagine a world where you could physically be anybody you want to. Everyone was perfect, young and beautiful because that's what they wanted to be.

3 Stars

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Just Me

Last updated: 2010-03-13 07:34:07 by user05

Surrogates

Starring: Bruce Willis, James Cromwell, Ving Rhames,
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Genre: Science Fiction
Rated: PG-13

In the future humans live in isolation and all interaction is done through robots that they control called “surrogates”

When a Surrogate is killed and its death causes the person running the surrogate to die Bruce Willis is a cop who tries to figure out how this happened.

Bruce Willis stars as Tom Greer a Cop who is trying to figure out how by killing a surrogate could the operator of the surrogate die as well. His surrogate is then destroyed and he must leave his apartment for the first time in a long time and be a detective in the real world as himself.

While the premise has some possibilities the execution is rather weak. The mystery of how this happens is figured out quickly, it then becomes a search for the weapon and who is behind it, with only a few characters there are not many choices and the mystery is quickly figured out.

For the life of me I can’t comprehend how they can create robots that look like humans and have the ability to leap like superhuman ninjas but they can’t create something that doesn’t look like a dead house cat to be the hair on Bruce Willis’ surrogate head.

The people live through there surrogates for most of their life and never leave there house yet when the surrogates get turned off and the people leave there home they are all people in great shape just in pajamas, It appears that in the future you can lay in a chair and never move and the worst that will happen is that you grow facial hair and don’t wear makeup, yet the one person in the movie who doesn’t have a surrogate is a fat mess.

There is also a lame chase scene where Bruce Willis is hunting down the owner of the mystery weapon and gets hit by a truck the next scene he is walking up to the guy with gun the mob of people chasing him that just ran him over somehow let him go (we don’t see how) only to shoot him when he catches the guy and gets the weapon this is stupid at best; furthermore the surrogates have superhuman strength yet even though Surrogate Bruce has a gun he never shoots the guy nor does he throw the gun at the guy to knock him down he just carries the rifle like a prop.

There is also a really pathetic scene where human Bruce Willis walks out onto the street for the first time, he is all disoriented and freaked out it is the dumbest most illogical scene of the whole movie he is walking around his apartment in the beginning of the movie so being outside of his surrogate is something he does, he just doesn’t leave his house as well as his surrogate has all five senses. Yet somehow going outside is really traumatic for him, this scene is a prime example of how the movie has a good premise but poor execution on the premise it would make sense if he never left the surrogate and was hooked up to feeding tubes etc but he isn’t, he walks around his apartment and talks about going on vacation outside of his surrogate.

Surrogates is remotely entertaining and better than I thought it would be, but that is like saying the dog crap I stepped in didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would. The more I think about this movie the less I liked it.

surrogates

i really dug this film.  of course i am a sci-fi nerd and have a huge man crush on bruce willis…

i’m also a big fan of an author called philip k. dick.  if anyone will remember he’s written books that have been made into movies for years and years.  the most notable being bladerunner from way back in 1982 starring harrison ford.  also total recall, minority report, a scanner darkly, paycheck and next.  so you’re probably more familiar with philip k. dick than you even know.   now, this film is no bladerunner and it wasn’t written by philip k. dick.  it just reminds me of his work.  kinda where humanity lets the technology take over for them and it ends up not being for the best.

in this picture, people have become hermits who live in thier little caves and interact with one another though surrogate robots.  they might as well be plugged into, dare i say it, the matrix.  there’s actually a little bit of lots of things in here.  from the matrix to escape from l.a.

it’s kind of a slick murder mystery in a time when murders no longer happen.  everyone uses surrogate robots so no one is out to be murdered.  if something happens to your surrogate, you just get a new one.  now, they never tell us how everyone can afford one of these hot rods but maybe it’s after universal health care and the govt buys one for everybody…who knows.

but i digress…

anyway, there’s a movement of people who oppose surrogates and have set up safe zones or something where they live in slum like conditions and don’t allow surrogates.  which doesn’t really make much sense.  why would they be living in slums just because they are opposed to surrogates?  seems to me they’d have more money than everyone else since they were constantly upgrading their robots…but it is just a movie i suppose.

and it’s an enjoyable movie.  there have been several films this summer where people are using some kind of virtual reality.  like in gamer, which sucked, people can plug into other people and control them whereas here you are plugging into a robot instead of another human.  whatever.  this is the best of any of the “virtual reality” films out this summer.

maybe if i find it in the 5 dollar bin i’ll purchase the dvd.  but not if i have to cross the street, ya know.

if you’re a sci-fi nerd or a big bruce willis fan, you’ll enjoy it and it’s probably worth going to see.  bruce willis gets his ass kicked and he just keeps coming!  there is a continuity issue with the scar on his cheek but who cares.  bruce willis just kicks ass.

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Cal Reed

Surrogates

If you've seen "I, Robot," then you've seen this movie. It has all the same ingredients: awesome action star, robots, some diabolical plot involving robots, more robots, the same actor who created robots starring in both movies, and finally a bunch of robots.

Only Will Smith did it much better. Do not be fooled by Bruce Willis' intrigued look on the movie poster, this is not his latest action flick. What "Surrogates" is, however, is an interesting look at the future that may very well be a possibility.

The movie starts with a brief montage of clips showing the usefulness of robots completely controlled by our own brains. Normally, I would write this off as fantastic science fiction myth specifically designed for this movie. The clips however are genuine, I've seen them on news sites (that means I am a credible source). The clips show chimps and handicapped humans controlling robotic appendages with nothing but their minds. Fast forward to the near future where 98% of the population sits in their Lay-z-boys at home and conducts all of their daily affairs with younger, better looking versions of themselves. They go out using surrogates (playfully named 'Surries') of themselves. This is probably the most achievable movie idea I've seen all year: a world where you or I can go out as the opposite sex, or as a different ethnicity and no one would know the difference. Believe me, if any science fiction movie is going to come true, it's going to be this one.

Bruce Willis stars as a cop (go figure) working in Boston. He, like everyone else, uses a surrogate to conduct police affairs. Seeing a blonde, young Bruce Willis is definitely a huge perk of this movie. Since most of the world uses surrogates, murder has dropped to zero percent. If a surrogate is killed, only the robot dies, the people in the chair get unplugged by failsafes that save them from death, making surrogates the safest thing in the world. Everyone's fantastic-looking and super human abilities come with the territory. Here's the catch: Willis finds two surrogates with their brains fried out. When he looks for their owners, he finds each one lying in their chairs with their own brains liquified.

Cue the inevitable treacherous plot involving the chief-of-police, the creator of surrogates (the same actor who created robots in "I, Robot") and the army. If you've watched at least ten movies in your life, the ending is easily predictable.

"Surrogates," while short on action and length (one hour and twenty minutes), balances itself with both a solid idea and Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis is a man who knows how to act, conveying the right amount of sadness and pain in one scene and brutal one liners in the next. But, he is getting old, and it shows in this movie. He still does some ridiculous things, but he gets beaten up, badly. When he ditches his surrogate he can't function in the outside world very well.

A great idea and a veteran actor save this movie from being thrown to the bottom of the bin. I can only recommend it for Bruce Willis fans, or science fiction fans in general.

Grade: C+/B- or two out of four stars

Last updated: 2010-03-02 09:21:15 by JoeandChrisO

Super Marcey's Surrogates Review

Rating: 2/5

First off, I really did not like this film and I was not really enthused to see it either. The trailer did not really sell me and it almost looked as if it was some kind of I, Robot rip off. Surrogates is set in the future where humans live isolated and instead they used robot surrogates to live, the surrogates allow them to look how they want and to be fast and strong. However a new weapon has come out which not only destroys the surrogate but the human controlling it. It is up to Bruce Willis to get to the truth and save the day.

The actual idea of the surrogates isn’t that bad but the way the actual humans live, laying down all day doing nothing seemed a little off to me. They surely would have bodies similar to that of coma patients but they didn’t. The surrogates looked alright, sometimes it was more on the humorous side (Bruce’s surrogate looked rather fake) and it didn’t work too well. The storyline and where it is heading is awfully predictable as well. If you can’t work this out before the film ends, well I feel sorry for you.

Casting wise it isn’t bad, Bruce does what he can with the material, he tries. Rahda Mitchell is alright and she is easy on the eyes, again she is stuck with such bad material not much she can do. Small roles from James Cromwell who is fine and Ving Rhames who is also fine but his look just does not fit him. The relationship between Bruce Willis and his wife feels forced at times and it is just there to try and add an emotional element but I was not feeling it.

It has a weak script and it is not very good, the dialogue leaves a lot to be desired. The direction is typical for this type of him and it does not offer anything new into this genre. There was potential there but this was a let down. It is not a long film, under 90mins but it felt longer and I felt bored at times. The action itself in the film isn’t all that bad, some scenes actually work pretty well and others just seem really silly. You could easily miss this film, it isn’t anything you haven’t already seen before.

(Written on 26 Feb 2010, first published at SuperMarcey.com) 

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Recommendations: Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009), Milk, Hurt Locker, The (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)

Last updated: 2010-02-25 21:08:42 by SuperMarcey

Surrogates

Ferris and Brancato strike again!

While this writing team gave us 1997's fun thriller "The Game," they also gave us the unintentionally hilarious Sandra Bullock movie "The Net," Terminators 3 and 4 (also known as "the bad ones") and the Halle Berry career-wrecker "Catwoman."

And they've got the threequel to "XXX" with Vin Diesel on the board for 2011.

Stop the madness, Hollywood!

"Surrogates" is a sci-fi movie -- and I use both terms loosely -- about a future where people never leave the house. Rather they navigate the world remotely through the use of android surrogates who are stronger and more attractive than their users. Also they cannot be hurt, so presumably bungee jumping is a popular activity in this vision of the future.

It's not a terrible idea for a movie. You can tell because the summer saw a movie with an almost identical premise (called "Gamer"), the winter will see a much-anticipated James Cameron flick with a similar premise (called "Avatar"), and there is a TV show with the premise currently running on Fox (called "Dollhouse.")

So with a decent but unremarkable idea, this movie comes down to execution.

And that's where Ferris and Brancato fail to earn their paychecks. "Surrogates" follows the story of police detective Bruce Willis and his partner Rhada Mitchell who are investigating the deaths of two surrogate robots -- which evidently caused their remote users to die as well. And that shouldn't happen!

The investigation leads to the father of one of the victims, the billionaire inventor of surrogates, James Cromwell. Cromwell is of course the bad guy. He has a nefarious plan to break into police headquarters, furiously tap away at a keyboard (exciting!) and kill off everyone currently using a surrogate.

Why would he do this? Because of vague philosophical reasons having something to do with the first-hand experience of life being preferable to living at a virtual remove. Which, hey, might make a good article for The New Yorker, but it's hardly worth killing a billion people over.

So the bad guy is intent on doing something no one in their right mind would do. He's just being a bad guy to be a bad guy.

But can he be stopped?

After losing his surrogate to a mob of luddites, Bruce Willis has to go into the world using his own (Hollywood-party-weathered) body.


This journey into vulnerability doesn't really land because all of us go into the world with our "actual" bodies every day. We're not impressed that Willis would go to the convenience store to pick up some milk -- in person!

Movies are meant to be journeys that take us somewhere, but "Surrogates" stays on familiar ground and fails to make us see it in any new way. Most of the dialogue is obsessed with the background information necessary to understand the details of the evil plan to kill off surrogates and their users.

The action sequences are utterly unremarkable, the tension is so thin you could drop your knife and asphyxiate, and the central relationship of the story, that between Willis and his wife (who prefers surrogacy to real life) is so perfunctory you wish the director had just put up the words "character scene here" each time instead of making us sit through it.

A friend had a good line walking out of the theater. He said:

"I wish my surrogate had watched that movie for me."

SCORE:

How Accomplished: 36/100

How Much I Enjoyed: 32/100

Surrogates

Hi. Having online friends and cyber dating is just sad. That's all.



So I got to go for the early screening of the show and didn't really know much about it, and to be honest i knida liked the movie. Okay so Surrogates is about a future world where people never leave their house but control these robots called Surrogates to interact and live their daily lives. Anyone can be anything they want and do whatever without any real implications cause their in actual fact just sitting at home controlling robots. It's kinda like RPG and chat rooms but in real life



The film has a lot of bold elements that take a stab at how we rely so much on technology like the Internet and stuff that we beging to lose what really makes us human. Surrogates give a whole lot of philosophical point-of-views that'll keep you pondering and but sometimes it does feel a little preachy.



Bruce Willis plays a cop who is forced to leave his home without using his Surrogate for the first time in many years in order to investigate a human related Surrogate murder. Willis makes the film watcheble, his role is one of the better ones he's had in a long time, though it's sad he didn't have much of a good script to play off. Radha Mitchell is awesome as ever playing his partner and damn.. Rosamund Pike looked realy good in here. (Surrogate Rosamund Pike not the real one, real Rosamund Pike was super ugly)



What I didn't like about the show were the actions scenes that were crowbarred into the movie for the sake of making the film slightly more entertaining, I get why they had to do that but I would have prefered if they just stuck to developing the thought provoking themes, which kinda had to take a back seat halfway through the movie to make way for the explosions.



Surrogates was a good show, I liked it a lot but it's the kind of movie that you watch, like and just forget about. It doesn't really have anything that will make you want to go back and see again. But for good entertainment, yeah give it a go, but don't pay more than RM7 for it, it isn't that worth it.



One part in the movie that really made me laugh was when Bruce Willis is having an argument with his wife aka. Surrogate controlled by his wife and she just went like "OK. This conversation is over" and just switches off. Hahahahahah. The perfect way of getting out of any argument!!

RATING: 6.5/10

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NicholasC

Surrogates

Online, you can hide behind an avatar and a lie of a profile and have complete anonymity.  Expand that to real life, with a realistic looking robotic body, made in your own image, or not, and you have the world of "Surrogates."  Most crime being a thing of the past, no more spreading diseases, racism and sexism gone (if you don't know, how can you hate?), and few, if any , consequences for your actions, (destroying a surrogate seems to be considered vandalism) all seem to take our own self centered, hedonistic, world of instant gratification to a whole new level.  Throw in those who don't choose to keep them selves 'safe' by using robotic bodies living on reservations, seemingly shunning technology and being the subject of new racism, and you might think that you have a great vehicle for a truly meaningful and poignant tale about where our ever increasingly virtual world is going.  Sadly, "Surrogates" just doesn't go there.  Perhaps the graphic novel origins of this story needed a bit more fleshing out (no pun intended, well, maybe a little) before it was ready for the big screen.  That's not to say that "Surrogates" wasn't a good movie, just not that good of a movie and a disappointment considering the subject matter.

     Bruce Willis brings his usual performance, that is to say, excellent.  If some of the acting seems a little plastic in the first act, that's because it is supposed to be.  Surrogates, the robotic bodies, are very advanced, but really don't quite pull off the full range of human emotions, especially the negative ones.  This vehicle is used for some of the movie's most poignant scenes, showing surrogates fail to register anything when emotions should be tragic, and having the operator, the person behind the machine, actually disconnect and feel those very painful emotions in real life, like they were meant to be felt.  It also shows the ability of people to lose themselves in lives devoid of any negative emotions and, in the process, they fail to feel anything.  Sadly, again, this is shown and explored very minimally.

     Thankfully, "Surrogates" also fails to explore the potential for CGI enhanced, adrenaline pumping, completely incoherent action sequences that would actually be possible with robotic bodies driven by humans who can't feel the pain or need to fear consequences like death or dismemberment.  There is one chase scene where this comes into play, but it is done realistically and is not unnecessarily fast or over the top.  Michael Bay would be disappointed.

      In the end, what you get is a mildly entertaining action film that doesn't assault your senses, but also doesn't really challenge your brain either.

Brian
Ciné Critique Américain

Last updated: 2010-02-14 11:05:33 by BrianSmith

Surrogates

There is good Bruce Willis and there is indifferent sleepwalking Bruce Willis. There is very intriguing and exciting science fiction movies and laughable and dull ones. The Bruce Willis in "Surrogates" looks like he is bored, indifferent and like he is having a miserable time. I like the alive, powerful and energetic Bruce Willis. Willis is a star simply because he has a great screen presence, seems amused at the material he is presented and always is alive and charismatic. Here Willis seems like he is going through the motions and he is not helped by a ridiculous story and wooden dialogue and characters. Why do most science fiction films seem somber, brainy and dull? Science fiction films can be fun as witnessed by the very entertaining reboot of "Star Trek" earlier this year. My favorite one is "12 Monkeys" which was complicated, had a great story that made you think but it was fun and Willis seemed alive. My least favorite is David Lynch's "Dune" because that was stiff, laughable, lifeless and one of the ugliest movies I have ever seen. "Surrogates" falls to the latter because it is dull with unintentionally funny moments, wooden dialogue which leads to bad acting and an ending I saw coming from a mile away. This movie reminded me of the very cheesy sci-fi howler "Looker" from 1982 with Albert Finney and Susan Dey which was so bad it was good. "Surrogates" is just plain bad and it is a shame because very good talent was involved.

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Vincent Snavely

SURROGATES (2009)

BOTTOM LINE: Sporting a visually slick look with great production values, “Surrogates” proves to be an otherwise dull, directionless and muddled affair, echoing previous films of the genre such as “Total Recall”, “I, Robot” and “Blade Runner” despite a premise that could have made for a unique film.

THE GOOD: “Surrogates” starts with the fascinating premise of humans using robot automatons to carry out the functions of every day life through an interface in to the brain. Humans no longer have to leave the house, jacked in to their surrogate who does all the physical work for them. Humanity hails the end of crime, disease and other pitfalls of life, but in doing so, begins to lose touch with itself. Enter homicide detective Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) who along with his partner Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell), are called in to investigate the death of a man via an overload from a weapon fired at his surrogate. When they discover that this weapon has the power to not only destroy surrogates but also their human hosts, they are thrown in to a web of treachery that takes them all the way to the inventor of surrogates “Canter” (James Cromwell). Using this futuristic premise and backdrop, director Jonathan Mostow manages to create a visually impressive film with a number of fantastically rich images. Much detail has also gone in to the creation of the surrogates, with each actor playing a surrogate looking noticeably plastic and unreal; Bruce Willis looks particularly strange in this make-up, although you may have to get past his odd haircut first. The film does cover themes of humanity’s loss to machinery and technology, with the film suggesting in the end that the only way we can re-discover ourselves is to pull the plug on all this wonderful technology we keep inventing and creating. The film has a handful of decent action scenes. “Surrogates” poses some interesting questions and does manage to introduce a fascinating idea at its core.

THE BAD: The film starts with a great idea but it is ultimately executed in a fairly pedestrian and unoriginal way. Director Mostow suffered the same issues withTerminator 3 in that the film seems to hit all the marks but does not create something more from it. Much of the problem lies in the setup of the film which gives an overview of the idea, but does not give an adequate setup for the Greer and Peters characters. Bruce Willis is not given much to do other than to continue emulating his Sixth Sense minimalist acting, and Radha Mitchell is made out to be nothing more than a beautiful prop. Thrown straight in to the deep end, the film does not seem to find its way until mid-way through the film when Greer begins to chase the makers of the surrogate-destroying weapon, but even then, the film manages to lose itself again with Greer taken out of the hunt, and then put back in again in a clumsy fashion. All of this suggests a poorly plotted script and no amount of flashy filmmaking techniques can make up for such a script. In the end, the film seems more like a clone of better films in the genre before it, and as such, is quite forgettable.

RATING: 6/10

Todd Murphy <br />
http://www.allaboutmovies.net

Movie Review: Surrogates (2009)

Directed by Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and starring Bruce Willis, Surrogates is a sci-fi film with tremendous potential but falls well short of reaching it.  It is based on a comic book series but feels more like an under-developed short story – you know, the type you see in sci-fi anthologies based on a brilliant idea but with only a so-so plot.  At the end of the day, it’s not a bad film, but certainly not one you’re likely to remember a couple of years down the track.
Surrogates is a difficult film to introduce because it’s hard to talk about the premise of the film without giving the essence of the story away.  Nevertheless, most people will have a fair idea if they’ve seen a preview or can put two and two together (think sci-fi and the title of the film).

As often the case with such films, the best part of Surrogates is the beginning when it brings the viewer up to speed with this new high-tech world in which the story takes place.  You then have a mystery that needs to be solved, and in comes Bruce Willis to save the day.  However, as it turns out, the plot itself is not particularly intelligent.  It’s a pretty standard affair with plot twists that are more likely to elicit ‘mehs’ than gasps.

The action was good, but was it outstanding?  No.  The drama was adequate, but was it great?  Definitely not.  What you end up with is a sci-fi film with a promising premise (albeit not an entirely original one) but a poor storyline that fails to fully engage the audience.  While it was effectively an action flick, it got too caught up in the moral/ethical/philosophical stuff and ended up not properly developing either aspect of the film.  The short running time of 89 minutes is fine for a movie like this, but it makes you wish they did more with it.  With a better script and improved execution, Surrogates could have been a lot more than it turned out to be.

That said, the special effects and make-up were impressive.  We are beginning to reach a point in time where the age of the actor will become irrelevant.  We might soon start to see movies where 70-year-old actors can play 20-year-olds – for the entire length of the film.

Jonathan Mostow is a decent director, having been at the helm of films such as Terminator 3, U571 and Breakdown (his last 3 films), but in this case you wonder whether he was restricted by the script.  Bruce Willis provides another ‘tortured soul’ performance we’re used to seeing.  Rosamund Pike is okay, but Radha Mitchell finds herself in a rather thankless role.  The worst, however, had to be James Cromwell and in particular Ving Rhames, who both appeared as though they were just in it for the paycheck.

To be honest, I was surprised at how little marketing Surrogates received.  With a budget of $80 million and Bruce Willis (plus an assortment of recognisable stars) you would have thought it deserved more.  Perhaps they knew well in advance that it wouldn’t be worth it.

3 stars out of 5!

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PJM

Last updated: 2010-01-05 22:17:19 by user04

Surrogates

A movie about robots taking over the humans’ lives – that should be an easy one to entertain the easy-to-entertained people, especially with hints to all the other robot movies, in which robots take over humans’ lives, either they do it voluntarily or the robots start war with the humans. Either it is something in between “I, Robot” or “Terminator”; “Matrix” or “Centennial Man”.
Surrogates is just another one of those movies with a robot theme, with a few stars in the cast, with a story, which could actually be a good one for a change, and with another one of those examples, since Bruce Willis once said not to star in any more action movies. Well, I can’t even remember when he said that. Surrogates shows, how the humans have the chance for life, only better: They are in control of their own surrogates, machines who poses as the operator, living the life without boundaries, without having fear, without failure, without dying. When a stupid, fat man wants to fuck a hot chick, he can take his younger, sexy surrogate into a club and nail one of the other hot and sexy surrogates. When a machine dies in any way, the operate just goes off-line and can buy another machine. It is a perfect world.
At least as long as the operators start to die with their surrogates, and FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell) want to get the killer, before he starts to kill every human operator behind the surrogates, when he gets to the weapon, who can kill them all at once.
  Yeah, the story is totally alright, nothing to trash-talk about that. For a mainstream blockbuster you don’t need anything more, and with a bit of moral in the story, you even make sure the critics don’t bash this movie. For a simple movie-goer is “Surrogates” the perfect choice to turn off the brain for 84 minutes and to get out with a not-bored feeling. All the mainstream lovers have an action flick with Bruce Willis starring, while the sci-fi-lovers have a robot story. Practically, “Surrogates” is totally mainstream, suited for the movie theaters, suited for one of the network channels to air this one at 8PM. And when somebody expected more from “Surrogates”, and left the theater with a mean expression, then this somebody should think about what to expect from a movie, directed by Jonathan Mostow, cast with Bruce Willis, and cut under 90 minutes…
But maybe, just maybe, Buena Vista should have thought about the fact that “Surrogates” is definitely not hitting the box office that strong, and maybe, just maybe, they could have cut the $80 mio. budget and could have spent a bit less for the movie. Everybody should have seen it coming that “Surrogates” won’t be number one at the box office on release date, and everybody should have seen it coming that a movie with Bruce Willis in the main role, even though it is an action flick, won’t be developing any interest with movie-goers. And with a worldwide gross of nearly $107 mio., Buena Vista is lucky not to have landed a total flop. I was expecting a flop, when I saw the trailer for the first time during “The Hangover”, but Buena Vista obviously didn’t have people to predict the future.
Therefore to all the movie studios: Hire me, if you want to know, if the movie is going to be a success.
Well, I kinda liked the movie, and I wanted to get all the plot holes, beginning with why the crime rate went down almost 100 per cent, but even that one is kinda-explained during the movie (well, you can think of a reasonable explanation, whether it is reasonable or not). I wanted to trash-talk all the cheap twists (regarding The Prophet [Ving Rhames]), but I can live with those, because it brought forward the story. And I wanted to trash-talk the characters, but all of them were actually pretty nice, though I wished to see more about the conflict between Tom and Maggie (Rosamund Pike). But I was glad that their story about the lost son didn’t get more screentime than it actually had – this could have been one of the most stupid storylines in the movie.
I just didn’t come to think about one thing: How are two robots supposed to have sex? Before Jarid (Shane Dzicek) gets killed, he was about to have some pleasure with the chick he met in the club, but how is it possible for the surrogates to have sex? I can’t think of male surrogates having a boner, or female surrogates really feeling pleasure. But, still, it was kinda funny, as well as the other little plot holes I won’t discuss here, because they would spoil the movie (again, regarding The Prophet).
But a few of them were seriously bullshit, especially the ending. Though it seems reasonable that Tom wants to end the existence of all the surrogates in the world, the meaning of the scene got totally lost. Not only can I not believe that no humans were harmed, but Tom was actually a mass murderer here. That the scene reminded me of “FlashForward”’s pilot episode was another thing, in the series, around 20 million people die, when the world stands still for 137 seconds. It is practically the same scene in “Surrogates”, but in here, no one dies… And I should believe that? The ending is definitely one of the most dull endings I have seen during the last years.
The actors are solid. Bruce Willis does a nice job as a troubled FBI agent, and I liked the more quieter scenes between him and his wife Maggie. Radha Mitchell made a good impression as well, and I liked her surrogate being ice-cold and starchy. Only her story twist came a bit too fast and was too forgettable.
James Cromwell and Ving Rhames didn’t have much screentime to wow one with their performance, and the fact that James Cromwell’s character was way too unimportant for being the creator of the surrogates and Ving Rhames’ character was full of clichés, didn’t make the movie much better.
The rest of the cast is boring, didn’t have much screentime or their character were dull, so nothing to trash-talk here.
Maybe it would be time for Bruce Willis, to hang his action career on the wall. He almost looks like Harrison Ford now, and he definitely doesn’t look good in action-themed flicks. Go, produce some TV series in future years or play daddy or granddaddy for younger, hot superstars (no, I am not waiting for Megan Fox playing his daughter in his next movie). And Jonathan Mostow can think about directing some more interesting movies – his last ones weren’t really interesting and mostly forgettable. “Breakdown”, his best movie in my opinion, is now 13 years old, and “Terminator 3″ wasn’t the burner everybody was hoping for. So, mister Mostow, take an offer for an independent flick and show us you are more than just a solid director with the affinity for action-themed movies.
As I already said, I liked the movie for what it was. Sure, it reminds everybody of “Minority Report” and “I, Robot”, but “Surrogates” is not that bad as a rip-off. The movie would have worked better with a more proper storyline, instead to go with a lot of action, a few car chases, as well as on-foot chases. The movie would have worked better, when the studio would have known that “Surrogates” is not working how they released it. Michael Ferris‘ and John Brancato’s screenplay doesn’t give much, even though the story had lots of potential. But all in all, it is a solid, watchable movie, which you can forget after you have watched it.
And that is what I am going to do.

Surrogates on mralphareak's blog

Last updated: 2010-03-19 08:33:08 by mralphafreak