A very solid film. My main complaint is its fleeting length--at under 90 minutes, a great deal of interesting ideas go underdeveloped. But the ideas ARE interesting and I found myself heavily involved in the plot and the contemporary-yet-futuristic world in which it's set. I also admired Bruce Willis' performance. He gives his character an emotional depth which may not have on the page. I thought the scenes where he pleads for his estranged wife (Rosamund Pike) to retire her surrogate and once again be his flesh-and-blood lover and partner were quite affecting.

Overall, I dug Surrogates. Seriously, though, I could have easily spent two hours with these characters and this plot.

B

Surrogates is not terrible, but the lack of scope is ultimately fatal. Especially during the awful, senseless ending, straight out of a certain beloved 2008 animated film, which serves to remind us that THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT VERY BIG, VERY IMPORTANT THINGS. That ending is laughably not-of-a-piece with the storytelling that preceded it.

What you see is what you get. If you've seen the trailers and TV spots you've pretty much seen the film (aside from Ving Rhames who doesn't contribute much). It doesn't try to be anything special. The film has it's moments (Gunslinger mentioned one, and I liked how we would fight wars in the future), but it's just not enough. And it doesn't help that the third act reveal is very easy to see coming. The film doesn't exactly try hard to hide it. Even if your paying half attention to the first twenty minutes it's easy to figure out what's going to happen and the person behind it.

Bruce Willis and Boston save it from being completely forgettable.

**

Oh, the (too-brief) war scenes were definitely cool.

Ugh, despite enjoying this, it also frustrates me. It's a solid Willis action picture through and through, but there are so many bits and pieces they could have dived into further and ended up with a richer, more memorable film. I would have enjoyed seeing more of James Cromwell's character, for example. (Despite the fact he was playing the same role he did in I, Robot a few years ago.)

I loved it, probably the best original sci fi film I've seen since the underrated Next. Good premise, fun effects, great performance by Willis. The twists are a bit generic but they still work here. I agree its short though. I would have loved to have seen more.

B+/ A-

And I think it kicked Eagle Eye's ass

Thats one movie I missed this year. Hopefully I'll catch it soon. Surrogates was just stylish, interesting and swiftly done. I hope there is a directors cut, maybe there is a longer version.

This was about as stylish as an episode of Sliders. Unless we're conisdering the overload of pointless dutch angles 'stylish.' Which we shouldn't.

Surrogates is a real robot movie. Judging from the square production design and utter lack of emotional resonance, this was made by robots for robots. A lot of people constantly praise Children of Men, and one of the reasons is because that movies setting was a subversive alternate reality you bought into by the first scene. In this future, not a single aspect of the world looks different, besides the fact that everyone walks around in robots!

The plot is essentially the exact same as I, Robot. And if you compare the two, you may find a newfound appreciation for Alex Proya's 2004 B-movie. If everything looked like it came from an Apple store, at least they tried. What's more, I, Robot boasted some creative action set pieces Surrogates can only dream electric sheep about! 80 million is not a slight amount of cash, but Surrogates feels very constrained regardless.

To be fair, this has been a pretty stiff year for sci-fi actioners. This month alone Gamer, 9, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs were all far more creative and even thought-provoking than this. In the year where Watchmen finally comes out, the cop-out, way too clean ending they slip us just doesn't cut it. And if it feels like all I'm doing is comparing Surrogates to other movies, that's because when you remove some of the nice effects and a consistent Bruce Willis performance, there's not one original part left.

The quick foxy ideas were jumped over by the lazy dog story.

Wow! I was diggin' the crazy ass storyline for maybe the first third, but then it veers rattling off the rails. If it weren't for Radha Mitchell and Bruce Willis, this whole thing woulda been DOA. Overall, I have to report that my output is negative.

{Please note: My surrogate reviewbot has been programmed to be very cynical and truthrich - - please adjust your point-of-viewer screens accordingly. Thank-you.}


00010 out of 00101

I actually kinda liked this.

It's nothing new or special, but it's executed with such flash and flair that it hardly matters. Countless comparisons to I, Robot may abound, but at least Bruce Willis was playing a character here, as opposed to Will Smith doing his usual schtick. Plus the action scenes were better.

I probably won't remember it tomorrow, but I enjoyed myself.

I enjoyed this movie too. I love Willis, so it was great seeing back on the big screen. I loved the action scenes too and the twists in the plot. The ending was absolutely awesome too!

Really?!?

It looked kinda cool, but meant pretty much nothing.

The knowledge of how to make surrogates wasn't destroyed, the factories weren't destroyed - - a new batch of surrogates is being shipped for next day delivery by Fed-Ex as we speak...

I didn't want to give the ending away, but yeah I did enjoy the final twist. I thought it was interesting and pretty thought provoking.

My eyes are officially bleeding.

Why did I go and see this?

F.

What was cool about the cop-out ending? The reporter for Exposition News talks about how not a single person was hurt (no robots fly planes? Not a single human was out and about?) and I'm still not really sure how the button went from 'Kill all humans' to 'Just destroy the surrogates.'

That was so patronizing. I audibly groaned.

Unbearably awful. Slightly worse than Eagle Eye.


D

Much much better than what I was expecting. Thanks to you guys. B-

4/10 -> D

The movie had an interesting premise. The one that could easily make for a great movie. Unfortunately they took it the wrong way. This is basically a whodunit set in some "alternate" future, just for the sake of it.

The whole surrogate thing goes totally unexplored. The point of the movie is to bring back humanity to the humans. But the movie doesn't present the surrogates that way to make you believe humans are devoid of humanity. Humans still feel and do everything they want to do, they care for each other, etc. Basically the surrogates here are the same as a complete plastic surgery makeover.

It's pretty nonsensical. Bad sci-fi.

Surrogates was a smart idea on paper but boy is a borefest. Bruce Willis is very weak throughout the film and the characters around him are just as flat. The film goes away too much from it's center plot of trying to find who killed the creator of Surrogate's son and how he could be killed in the first place while still in his surrogate. It is dumbed down from plenty of poor subplots, the most annoying being between Willis' character and his wife (played by Rosamund Pike) as Pike's character never wants to leave her surrogate and that her previous life is past her. When the action comes in, it isn't intriguing at all and it was all seen in the trailer. When the film wants to be intense, its not. The ending is also too confusing and doesn't make too much sense considering the film's mission overall. A complete bust and one of the worst of 2009. No Stars

C+


Surrogates was a severe disappointment to me. It took a very interesting plot idea, a good action star and a solid director for this kind of stuff...and turned the whole thing into a rather uninspired mess. The visuals are nice and I enjoyed some of the action, but Bruce Willis really sleepwalks through the entire thing. The Ving Rhames-related twist was pretty nice, but that's about as far as a good plot goes. The very ending is really somewhat ridiculous as MovieDude has pointed out. What the movie lacked was simply a solid set of balls. It played very safe, by-the-numbers, trying to appeal to as many moviegoers as possible - and what came out was a bland mixture of science-fiction and action. It doesn't excel in either of the two.

It's a decent enough viewing for a night out, but nothing one would long to revisit later down the road. There's just nothing, absolutely nothing about it that stands out in any way.