SURROGATES (Bruce Willis) review by Mark Walters

I love Bruce Willis. I've loved watching him since the MOONLIGHTING days, and I've found something to enjoy in just about every film he's made. There's something about the guy that just works on screen. People have used the words "everyman" and "a guy's guy" in reference to him, and I suppose there's something to that. I even had the pleasure of interviewing him for LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, which was a dream come true, partly because I consider him a hero from my youth, and partly because I figure that's the last time we'll likely see John McLane on film. His new movie is called SURROGATES, based on the graphic novel of the same name. I gotta admit, when watching the trailer for this film, I had instant flashbacks to THE 6TH DAY with Arnold Schwarzenegger... which isn't a bad thing, as I didn't hate THE 6TH DAY, it just performed very poorly at the box office, and somewhat served as a definitive indicator that Arnold's action hero days were coming to an end. My hope was SURROGATES wouldn't be the same sort of film for Bruce's career.

The movie opens with a montage that explains to the audience that through the years a new technology became wildly popular - robotic counterparts called surrogates that humans can live vicariously through, allowing them to be pretty and virtually invulnerable, and to essentially go anywhere and do just about anything. As the humans lay back in their homes, jacked in to their robotic other selves walking around in the real world, there's never any sense of danger. But of course there is a faction of people who reject surrogate technology, led my a man called The Prophet (Ving Rhames). Then one night in a back alley of a seedy nightclub, someone murders two surrogates in such a way that is also kills their human counterparts. It is a homicide by way of surrogate, and it spells serious danger to all who use them. FBI agents Greer (Willis) and Peters (Rhada Mitchell) investigate the murders, and even question the creator of the surrogates Canter (James Cromwell) to see if he has any insight. It becomes a murder mystery from then on, with a subplot of Greer wanting his wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike) to stop spending so much time in her surrogate body, and for the two of them to deal collectively with the death of their young son.



This film is like a hybrid of several other sci-fi films you've seen before, including THE MATRIX, MINORITY REPORT, I-ROBOT, VIRTUOSITY, and yes, even THE 6TH DAY. But there's a science fiction purity to it as well, in that we just don't get movies like this these days, with an uncorrupted sense of sci-fi for the sake being a sci-fi movie. I'm somewhat surprised that someone like Bruce Willis would talk on a film like this, only because I have a hard time believing he would actually understand it. That's not a jab at Bruce, it's just complicated material. There's a fascinating aspect to the idea of a real person living through the body and visage of a robotic counterpart, and that's part of what makes this a very interesting movie. However, there are many facets of that potential lifestyle that are either only touched on lightly, or just brushed over enitrely in this script. Clocking in at under 90 minutes, I have to believe we're missing a lot of material that would've fleshed out the story a bit more.

Bruce is pretty good in his role, as is to be expected, though his best moments are when he's playing his "real life" persona, an older more haggard man who looks constantly worn out. Willis is on the top of his game when he's playing stressed out, and that appears here thankfully. Jonathan Mostow directs this with style and finesse, giving it a slick look and feel, and truly transporting us into the script. Some of the pacing is a bit slow toward the middle, but Mostow makes up for it with some creative action sequences. Perhaps the weakest parts of this movie are with the supporting cast members. Bruce is giving his all, but the actors surrounding him never seem to perform on the same level, which affects the overall feel of the film. Ving Rhames is in the end VERY wasted, and his ONE scene with Willis is so brief it's insulting. There's also the problem of having the majority of the film's characters be robots, mostly devoid of feeling, emotion, or any real concern, After all, they don't need to worry about anything, as that's the allure of having the surrogate. But to the audience, having a bunch of robots as your lead characters can make it very hard to invest in any of them to any real degree. Overall SURROGATES is not a bad film, but far from a great one. It was nice to see what is a fairly open and shut movie, with no obvious signs of sequel ambition. The creative sci-fi elements make it worth a look, but probably only one look.

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