Surrogates Movie Review 51

Surrogates is a science fiction movie starring Bruce Willis who was in the excellent Die Hard. It tells the tale of life in the future society where everybody has a surrogate which is basically a robot that they can control. People can follow their surrogate by camera and live out their lives as they see fit. They tend to just plug in from home and do anything they want as it is not really them. The movie begins by showing how people use surrogates and how human-only zones have been set up. Then we see the surrogate inventors son being zapped by a device that not only will kill the surrogate, but the operator too.

Assigned to investigate this case are Tom Greer(Willis) and Peters(Radha Mitchell). He is having relationship difficulties with his wife due to the death of their son in a car accident. Ving Rhames is The Prophet, the leader of the Human Coalition and is considered a prophet by his followers as he does not use surrogates. James Cromwell is Older Canter, the inventor of the surrogates and he has not been seen for a while since he was forced out of his own company!!! Things progress for Willis' investigation as he soon begins to wonder if there is a cover-up going on. Surrogates has an interesting and exciting premise but it felt like after the opening twenty minutes that were good, it plodded along slowly as the cover-up is revealed.

There are some good action sequences but they are preceded by a lot of boring dialogue as Willis' character visits various places. It is obvious who is behind the cover-up and the movie seems like a rehash of Minority Report. If you have seen that movie, then you will know what to expect here but Minority Report was more exciting.Surrogates feels like a Philip K. Dick short story or novel, but it is actually based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele.

Just as in Minority Report, Surrogates deals with a future that has no crime as anyone can use a surrogate for everything. Of course all is not as good as it seems and the movie heads to a predictable conclusion. If you like science fiction, it might be worth a look on DVD but I would not recommend going to see it in the cinema, especially if you have already seen Minority Report. I have not read the graphic novel but I would think it's better than this movie!!! 5/10.