DVD Reviews

Surrogates

• Rating:
• Director: Jonathan Mostow
• Starring: Bruce Willis
• Details: US/88mins (12A)

He's a trooper that Bruce Willis; now well into the mid-century, he's still knocking out the action roles, even if he does need a rub down after every car chase. It's a good thing, so, that there are very few action sequences in Surrogates; a film that hovers over a similar, quasi sci-fi/noir ground as Will Smith vehicle, I Robot. Despite having a somewhat stellar source as cult graphic novel, the story here feels inherently slight, due to some pedestrian handling from director Mostow, a script that feels too middle-of-the-road to have anything relevant to say, and a rating that pretty much forbids it from entertaining anyone past their mid-teens. What's the point having an action film with no real action?
Story sees Bruce Willis' FBI Agent investigating the murder of two surrogates, in an incident that also managed to kill their owners. A surrogate is a robotic, ideological version of its human counterpart; a user can venture out into society, doing whatever they want, without the risk of anything at all bad happening to them. That is until the aforementioned drones are killed, and whoever was plugged into them from home. Willis' G-Man smells a rat that involves the hierarchy of the company that invented the now global use of the robots, and sets about investigating it, old school.
Surrogates is a nothing film. It doesn't have anything to say, its direction is very much of the Brett Ratner, "point and shoot" variety, and Willis looks completely bored for every minute of its mercifully short runnning time. You can tell it desperately wants to be sexy, and the story itself is a great hook with a lot of possible avenues to go down - it just never chooses a direction and suffers drastically as a result. The whole production is just lacking in something that would see it find a definable audience, as the shiny looking cast and slick trailers will only pull in so many. Those that do go will find themselves mildly distracted, but never really entertained.
Willis really needs to choose his roles with a lot more care, or if he thinks he does that already, fire his agent. This is very much a bland blockbuster from the director of Terminator 3. Revisit your Die Hard box set instead.

Review by Mike Sheridan