Surrogates 2009

How do you save humanity when the only thing that's real is you?

6.108 / 10   3027 vote(s)
PG-13
Science Fiction Action Thriller

Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others' surrogates.

Homepage http://chooseyoursurrogate.com/
Release Date 2009-09-24
Runtime 1h 29m
Directors Jonathan Mostow, Oliver Wood, Andrew Max Cahn, E. David Cosier, Cosmas A. Demetriou, Steve Koster, Igor Meglic, Jill K. Perno, Brett Robinson, Matt Rawls, Nilo Otero, John G. Scotti, Matt Rebenkoff, Brandon Lambdin, Mark Trapenberg, Gregory J. Pawlik Jr., Jessica Franks, Simon Crane, Brian Smrz, Derek Wolfe, David Stopford, Jeffrey Charles Higgins, Aurora Warfield
Producers Max Handelman, David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, Mike Chambers, Brian Drewes, Arthur Windus, Liz Roberts, Ann Podlozny, Michael Van Himbergen, Nick Monton, Missy Papageorge, Jonathan Montepare, Kim Ferandelli, Stephanie Norton, Jared Marshall, Rebecca Windsor, Todd Arnow, Elizabeth Banks, David Nicksay
Writers Michael Ferris, John Brancato

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

John Chard