Il mondo dei replicanti

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.

With the number of mainstream movies centered around a future human dependency on robots, it would be incredibly stupid if we actually let that happen. "Surrogates" is the latest of these concepts and surprisingly one of the more well thought-out ones. Based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, "Surrogates" imagines a world where humans interact with the world solely through robot versions of themselves called surrogates. They don't have to leave their homes and are impervious to danger.

Writers Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, who previously collaborated with director Jonathan Mostow on "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and sadly also wrote the Halle Berry "Catwoman," do their best work with this script, which is of course not saying much. The positive here is that they truly embrace and explored the possibilities of a word where people don't interact with people -- just the robot versions of themselves. It's the saving grace of the film.

Bruce Willis stars as a homicide detective assigned to the very first case on record where the actual human operator of a surrogate died when the surrogate was killed. With nearly all of the planet using surrogates, any knowledge of danger would throw the world into panic. Willis -- Det. Greer -- must track down the weapon that did the damage. When his surrogate is destroyed, Greer begins to re-examine life through non-virtual eyes.

Without question, however, the concept and the setting are far more clever than the script. Ironically like robots, when you boil down the exterior of "Surrogates," it's composed of overused clichés and recycled components of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick stories. The simple premise and thoroughly conceived world of "Surrogates" manages to override some lousy story lines and character development, but I'm not sure that most viewers who come to "Surrogates" looking for more action and less high-concept science fiction will be able to say the same.

The subplots and back stories given to Greer and other characters are throw-away. At 89 minutes long, "Surrogates" offers just enough in terms of story development to be a glorified TV detective show set in the future. The twists are foreseeable and the character motivations barely scratched at, but it keeps your attention and stays focused enough on the central story that you never have to actually dwell on the more hollow elements of the film. The venerable James Cromwell, who plays the disgruntled inventor of surrogates, has never looked more shallow in a role, but it's hardly of any consequence.

Sci-fi epiphany? None here, but a well-calculated exploration of a possible new technology - - yes. "Surrogates" is not mindless fun, but it's not artistic science fiction perfected to a tee either. It does just enough to intrigue the future-curious mind with a different cut from the same robot mold.

~Steven C

Visit my site moviemusereviews.com

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.

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