How do you save humanity when the only thing that's real is you? (Surrogates (DVD))

Member Name: aylawarner

Product:	Surrogates (DVD)
Date:	31/10/09 (69 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bruce Willis, excellent plot, great looking surrogates

Disadvantages: Not enough action, lacking in something, Willis with hair!

In the future, humans live their lives through the use of a surrogate, a remote-controlled robot, which is created to look like their owner. However, owners make their surrogates look younger and better looking so they can live out their perfect lives through them. There's also the advantage that surrogates cannot get ill or be harmed and so the world is now free from crime, disease and murder.

But when the first surrogate ever is found murdered and its human equivalent ends up dead too, FBI agent Tom Greer sets out to investigate how the impossible has happened and who is behind the murders, throwing him into a huge conspiracy behind the surrogate world, where he must leave his own surrogate behind and risk his own life in the process.

~ Cast ~
Tom Greer - Bruce Willis
Peters - Radha Mitchell
Maggie - Rosamund Pike
Stone - Boris Kodjoe
Canter - James Cromwell
The Prophet - Ving Rhames

The storyline is a little strange, although quite fascinating, and has the same kind of feel as Gamer, where the world is filled with computerised humans all artificially made to look however their owner wants them to look. In this case, each owner wants their surrogate to look younger and more perfect so weight is lost, wrinkles are smoothed and hair is grown. Willis looked especially strange with a huge flock of hair on the top of his head, although I have to say that I find him much sexier looking older and with a bald head! They did a great job of making the surrogates actually look like surrogates so you could easily tell the difference between them and the real humans. The surrogates had this plastic kind of look with a shiny face and a more stiff posture and movements that made them look a little like Barbie and Ken dolls.

The potential was huge for this storyline with the surrogates completely taking over their humans' lives so that the humans simply end up deteriorating away in their bedrooms. They end up never washing, never eating, never communicating with others and never moving further than to the next room in their own house and this ends up having a negative effect on the humans, as you can see from the problems it causes between Tom and his wife Maggie who haven't actually seen each other, as humans, in years. Living through a surrogate, although a safer and more perfect life, also has its disadvantages.

It's always great to see Bruce Willis in an action film playing yet another good cop. And he does it just as well in this film as he does in any other. He plays both his human and surrogate roles brilliantly with a lack of emotion and facial expressions when he is a surrogate, but with lots of emotion, expressions and action when he comes out into the real world in his own proper body.

The supporting cast were good but nothing particularly special. Even when they were playing their 'real' human characters, which wasn't very often, they still all seemed to be very plastic and fake and Willis seemed like the only human in the entire world with natural movements and proper emotions and reactions. Willis was the main one who carried the whole film and it would have been a complete flop if it wasn't for him.

The story was brilliant and the plot had a lot of potential but for some reason it just didn't really work that well. There wasn't as much action as you'd have expected from a film like this and it was just lacking in something. I was expecting it to be a Die Hard type film filled with lots of fast-paced action that had your gripping your seat but it wasn't like this at all. There was no fear, tension or panic - pretty much how a surrogate would feel to be honest. It was still an enjoyable film but so much more could have been done with this, that it made the whole thing pretty average.

Running time: 88 minutes
Certificate rating: 12A
Director: Jonathan Mostow

Summary: Could have been brilliant but wasn't