The easy review for this film is that it's a poorly executed science fiction story that lacks a good enough budget for its CGI and a weak execution of its story.

But that misses the point almost entirely...

Think of this film along the lines of Demolition Man. You watch it now and it is remarkable how much of the concept has come to be and how prescient it seems.

Take this film in a similar vein...

We're living on the cusp of massive change. We have a parallel financial system being created in crypto-currencies. We have NFTs that are set to revolutionise the sale of music and property. And we have games being played that are social meeting places for the youth of the world where they can own & rent out items within the game world and other related game worlds... Meta universes. Metaverses. And that brings me to this film...

Instead of these surrogates being our presence in the physical world, I think the concept is excellent but inverse to what will actually transpire - we will live part-time in 'metaverses' using surrogates within them.

A world where money can be earned (crypto of course) and brought back in to the real world...

The dream of living and working in two totally different realms is closer to reality than you'd imagine. Think Internet 1998. When does Amazon arrive or has it already? When does the smartphone arrive that catalyses the whole thing into a new dawn...?

But yeah, Bruce Willis doesn't suit that wig. The CG is weak. The plot is predictable. The film is too short. The acting is sub-par. Yet the concept is riveting.


6.5/10

Surrogacy is a perversion. It's an addiction. And you have to kill the addict to kill the addiction.

I first viewed Surrogates upon its home format release and positively found it very ordinary. Viewing it again, with focus and in solitude, it proved to be a far better experience.

The action scenes are what you would expect for a multi-plex appeasing popcorner, loud, colourful and owing great debt to modern technology. Yet to dismiss this totally as one of those easy money making blockbuster movies is most unfair.

Surrogates oozes intrigue, even if it doesn't quite deliver on the smartness written on the page. The idea that in the future robotic alter egos can carry out our everyday mundane functions is cracker-jack, and it opens up a whole can of berserker worms.

This is not merely an excuse to have Bruce Willis running around exploding surrogate robots, as much fun as that is of course, there's a deeper emotional core pulsing away as Willis fights the good fight to make sure being human is not cast aside like a thing of the past, that as flawed as we are, hiding away in a surrogate is not the answer.

This axis of the story is beautifully realised by the plot strand involving Willis and Rosamund Pike as his wife, with both actors doing fine work to give it the required emotional heft. It may ultimately lose itself to a standard conspiracy plot, but there's intelligence within to make Surrogates a better film than it first appears. 7/10

Surprisingly, I liked it quite much! As with Lucky Number Slevin, the 6th Sense or the original Die Hard movies I had no high expectations but Bruce surprised me (-: I cannot say why I liked it exactly and I do get that others, on average, would rate it at only 6.7, but I still like it.

I thought I was in for an no-brainer action flick. And while that is true for certain aspects of the film, [spoiler] I really liked the underlining idea of robots, aka Surrogates, linked electronically to its host, allowing them not only to explore their surroundings but literally to live their lives. I think the scenario of Surrogates replacing real people in most of the daily activities is not all that absurd and could be a likely scenario in a technically more advance society (although a world technologically that advanced would look like depicted in the movie). [/spoiler]I do agree that the characters would benefit from more depth but I found it not very annoying that they havn’t.

So all in all I would recommend to give Surrogates a try even though the reviews are not that good and see if you like it! As was the case for me, you may like Surrogates much better than say I, Robot!