Movie Review: Surrogates

Bruce Willis stars in the movie adaptation of the graphic novel Surrogates. In a future where humans live life through robots known as surrogates FBI Agent Greer (Willis) must uncover the mystery of  how human operators are being killed through their robot counter parts.

It has been a while since we have seen Bruce Willis in a science fiction-like role and I know that I was excited to see him return to such a place. Unfortunately, Surrogates really wasn’t the project to get that fix in. The main story in done well enough, but the fact of the matter is that the film is kind of boring. The total run time is just under an 90 minutes and it never kept my interest. They don’t take enough time to set up the characters so it’s hard to actually care about them. Agent Greer could have been interesting if they only told us more about him. He obviously has had some issues in the past, but they are over shadowed by lack of story telling.

It was weird to see such a well known cast of actors not bring this film together. You had Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Boris Kodjoe and James Cromwell. That may not be a huge amount of star power to some, but I like them all especially Cromwell. Alas, a great cast does not a good film make. The actors that have surrogates in the film do an excellent job of distinguishing the way there robot looked and moved from the way the “real” person moved. Willis, as his surrogate, had very little expression and moved kind of slow and almost feminine in step. It was a good touch that was not wasted on this viewer. And honestly the rest of the cast with surrogates did a great job of making there doppelgangers move and act different too.The real heroes here had to be the make up artists and special effects people. They did a excellent job of making the actors look like they were robot versions of themselves. The actors have a plastic appearance to them and they dont look cheesy doing the action scenes.

What I thought was funny about this whole film were its similarities to I, Robot. I knew people that were saying that it looked too much like that particular film and others thinking that was crazy. I must say it reminded me of that movie as well when I saw the trailer.  If Touchtone Pictures really wanted to stay out of that comparison they should not have cast Cromwell to play the godfather of surrogate technology because he was also the godfather of robot technology in 20th Century Fox’s I, Robot.

I really can’t say that I recommend this film to the masses. Check it out if you read the graphic novel so that you can pick it apart, but other than that it doesn’t offer much. The premise for the film was enough for me to want to see it I just wish that it had delivered.

Fanboyz Grade: D

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