Surrogates

It would probably have been better if they hadn’t given away almost the whole movie in the first clip, but in any case I reasonably enjoyed myself. Some of it is seriously gourmet style (yep, the chase with the one-armed Bruce), but most of it was more like marzipan on an over-sweet cake. The story is clearly not fully thought through, even though I’m ready to believe that as a comic book it was at least 50% better. Also, I didn’t much like Mostow’s plastic vision. Did they all really have to look THAT artificial? (12/12/2009)

Definitely above average. Neither Bruce Willis nor Jonathan Mostow disappointed and they made a quality summer spectacle, but it didn't hit the movie theaters until the autumn. Oh well. The film went by pleasantly fast, 90 minutes felt like nothing, it hardly lost momentum and everything in it was clear and nice to look at. I have no reservations about the action scenes and effects, or the actors and actresses. Don't expect philosophy, don't expect "another Matrix or I, Robot", expect fun with a bit of thought put into it. (10/16/2009)

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)

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)

I remembered the film from 2009 as pretty good sci-fi fun, so I wanted to recall it years later. Surrogates is a good movie, it just has trouble crossing over into the "better" movie category. Jonathan Mostow unfortunately isn't that experienced a director and didn’t have to climb the filmmaking ranks of other big names, and that's probably where the whole result stems from. For the kind of material he's working with here, he doesn’t the potential to its fullest, the concept of surrogates and the sci-fi world is so broad that it could have been worked into at least a two-hour feature or better yet a series; 85 minutes is definitely not enough to do that, it feels very abbreviated and straightforward, which on the one hand makes the film move quickly and doesn't get boring, but on the other hand it offers a feeling of incompleteness. That said, as an average action film for an undemanding viewer it works fine. (01/04/2023)