Clones

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

When you have scores of people living their lives through their online personas, each competing with one another to appear more happy, more perfect, then this movie seems rather prophetic.

I see some complaining about the wooden performances throughout the film, ignoring the fact that this is the point. The surrogates emote very little, and are uncanny to us, who rely so much on non-verbal language to understand our interactions. The moments where actual humans are allowed to emote, especially the brief scenes with Rosemund Pike, shine all the more for it.

Is this movie high art in film form? No, but it's entertaining, it's fairly well paced, and its message is cogent. I recommend watching it at least once.

Heavy handed, but surprisingly effective.

On the effects of a remote life, thanks to the interwebs and Uber.

And a surprisingly contemporary ending, with people in their dressing gowns coming out in the streets -- is this what the end of the Covid confinement will look like?

Ps-yes, Bruce Willis is scary with that wig. Get over it. In 10 years we won't even have actors.

I see many reviews here that denigrate the film, and a few that celebrate it. I believe it deserves neither fulsome praise nor vitriol, as it is a somewhat better than average film betrayed by bad choices.

I'll keep this short: The concept is decent, the execution is mediocre, the result is that I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

I would have graded this far higher had the creators spent more time making several of the characters more human (which is funny, given that "humanity" as compared to a more machine-like existence is a core concept of the screenplay), but they didn't. The only character in the film who achieves anything like true humanity is Bruce Willis', and this occurs only because the plot requires it.

When a film's construction and leverage depend on the very definition of humanity as it's core concept, leaving the humanity of most of the characters behind is something more than stupid -- it cripples the film.

This doesn't mean the film is unwatchable; it has enough elements of action, pathos, suspense & revenge to make it worth your time throughout.

But it could have been so much better, if not for so many poor choices.

Finally saw this and I'm with the majority here... a solid 7/10 film.

This surprisingly compelling sci-fi film takes a while to set up its universe but delivers down the stretch. It's borderline whether they establish enough credibility so as to invest real emotion in to the characters and buy in to the premise. If you allow yourself to buy in to the bizarre concept of living life through android duplicates, then the film works on a few levels. It's somewhat weak on certain of those levels but raises interesting questions concerning the level of our technological dependency as we live our lives. The emotional aspect of this movie plays better thanks to a fine performance by Bruce Willis. His character's journey through this bizarre world is obviously the heart of the film and it's written and portrayed very well.