Review: The Surrogates

Somewhere between near future and distant future, the majority of the population have been replaced by remote control robots. Despite a numbing sensation, the world has seemingly become a utopia until someone dies from feedback from their destroyed robotic counterpart.

The story has a lot of potential . Utopian world. Robots. Subtle thematic undertones that turn out to be not so subtle. The movie never reached it's full potential. It promised to be a robot action flick with a thriller pace, but the movie crawls to the ending. It is full of plot holes and the storyline seems pretty forced. A world where 99% of the population are actually controlling robots to do their day-to-day stuff probably does not need an FBI, yet there is one that looks well funded and very busy. The robots are also lacking serious emotions. That sounds weird considering their machines, but they are controlled by people yet comically perform as pieces of wood.

The Surrogates needed a serious injection of Bruce Willis. Yes, Bruce Willis is already cast as the lead, but you would never know. His famous wit and charisma is missing almost completely. One scene where he chews out his boss and another where he mouths off to a female legal aid for probably being a sexually frustrated man at the remote are truly the only scenes worth seeing just to see Willis do what he does best.

As most pieces of science fiction, this movie tries to have a meaningful theme. It is exactly what you would think. Live life equals good. Control robot equals bad. Not very inspiring at all. The potential for lamenting on freedom, personal prisons, dependency on technology are left pretty much out of the picture except for the finale mad genius rant that is too cliche to even count.

The Surrogates is an incredibly dissapointing film with all the potential to be a fantastic and unique blockbuster, but apparently those two terms (unique and blockbuster) continue to stay disassociated. But its still an action pic with a few good explosions (I suppose).

3/10