Surrogates

A proper fiasco. Bruce Willis is clearly bored and wasting his time on unsuccessful and rip-off sci-fi flicks. Jonathan Mostow completely failed, Rosamund Pike’s breasts are three sizes larger than her standard, which sticks out like a sore thumb on Surrogates, and overall, this colourful and non-contact fairy tale is just golden tinsel that hardly earned its keep. I recommend avoiding it completely. (02/24/2010)

The square root of film adaptations of Phillip K. Dick, both the good and the bad ones. A generic and stupid sci-fi B-movie with a not stupid idea that the right hands could be the base of a new Blade Runner. In the end, it’s actually like Total Recall, but without the action. (10/05/2009)

Bruce gave himself a nice old bit of action, but so why not, it didn't look awkward at all... only the hairpiece in the robo-creature was really funny... :-D I think it's a shame that the movie got such a low rating, I don't think it deserves it, but I get it. It's such a tired, long-winded, bland and flavorless film, even though it's only 88 minutes long. Which is a pity. For such a rip-off... ;-)) [SPOILER] And once again, everyone survived, and once again, Bruce was so awesome, brilliant and moral; coincidentally, the idea of wiping out 98% of the human population isn't so bad... X-D (10/24/2009)

Surrogates is to some extent a B- movie with a grade-A budget. It is based on an interesting idea that aptly allegorizes the artificiality of contemporary peroxide-and-shopping culture. However, it needed a more ambitious screenwriter who would write something more than an action-packed forgettable flick made marketable thanks to Bruce Willis. In the film, we find motifs familiar from Children of Men (“dreadlocked guys” on the margins of society) and the attractive high-tech visuals of I, Robot, and it wants to be deadly serious like Spielberg’s Minority Report. However, unlike those movies, Surrogates does not dare to take a single step in its own direction and prefers to work with proven twists, tries to look clever by being unnecessarily contrived and at least in one (the final) scene, it is even ridiculous due to the futility of its screenplay. The character of the dreadlocked “Prophet”, played by Ving Rhames, is not well executed; Willis himself is alright as the only link between the viewer and the real world of living people, but unfortunately without any cool lines or humor, which could have provided some needed comic relief. (09/15/2009)

If Mostow has been considered a solid craftsman up to now, he will now be considered a desperate routinist... and a thief to boot. As long as it still follows the popcorn rules à la I, Robot, we can enjoy the slightly B-movie atmosphere, which is carried by Willis's cynical smile and funny toupee. Then we get some mentoring according to Issac Asimov and Phillip K. Dick in the visual diction of Terminator 3 and everything goes to hell. It wouldn't have had to be this way if someone had bothered to add some extra runtime, given the characters some life, and if the film had at least one memorable scene. The result is the most ridiculous blockbuster of the year, which I predict will become a cult film in a few years and a must-have in the "guilty pleasure" collectors' kit. (10/23/2009)