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Home > Blogs > Sir Critic on Cinema > Archives > 2009 > September > 25 > Entry
‘Surrogates’ too robotic for its own good
Surrogates very effectively shows what it’s like to be a fake human being. That’s why it doesn’t quite work.
Although it sports clever action scenes, good performances and an intriguing premise, Surrogates fails to connect because it’s too mechanical for its own good. Bereft of emotion, the movie left me cold. Fascinated as I was by some of the ideas, ultimately I didn’t really care about the characters.
That’s a shame because Surrogates, based on a graphic novel by Robert Vendetti and Brett Weldele, had a lot of potential. At first, it struck me as kind of a low-rent Minority Report, depicting a near future that uses innovative but unethical technology. In this movie’s case, that technology is robots, or as the title would have it, surrogates. Originally, the surrogates were created to help the disabled and the military.
As humanity so often does, however, it lets the technology get out of hand. Surrogates become so popular, almost everyone uses at least one. From a remote location, humans can make the surrogates do risky adventurous things they wouldn’t attempt themselves.
This becomes especially dangerous when a terrorist finds a way to kill the surrogates. Not only does a specialized weapon disable the robot, it also taps into the robots’ feed to the human. So when the surrogate dies, the human dies with it. Investigating the crime is Greer (Bruce Willis), a police detective who is himself so attached to his surrogate, he hasn’t left his house in years.
Besides this fascinating plotline, Surrogates has a number of strong points. The cast is uniformly strong. Willis plays a burnt-out shell of a man very well, Radha Mitchell proves her action prowess as Willis’ partner, who is also a surrogate, Rosamund Pike is affecting as Greer’s wife, who is even more lost to surrogates, and James Cromwell is as compelling as ever playing the surrogates’ reluctant creator.
Director Jonathan Mostow’s other credits include Breakdown, U-571 and Terminator 3. As he did in those films, Mostow shows strong action chops in this movie. A chase with Willis and Mitchell is not only exciting but rather funny, as Willis blithely mows down one surrogate after another.
For all his technical skill, however, Mostow isn’t nearly as good at telling a human story, and that’s where Surrogates finally breaks down. The screenplay by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris, who also wrote Terminator 3, never hides its twists well, and it’s so caught up in technology itself, I found it hard to care about anyone.
It’s doubly ironic, then, that the movie comes out the same week The Wizard of Oz celebrated its 70th anniversary. This movie has a brain and even a little courage, but somewhere along the way, someone forgot to give it a heart.
GRADE: C+
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Reviews
Comments
By L. Quinn
September 28, 2009 7:59 AM | Link to this
This movie was the worst. I was very disappointed. D-By Matt Felt
September 26, 2009 11:20 AM | Link to this
Yeah, it seems like Cromwell has been in alot of movies. Alot of it seems to point towards the higher up in politics type of guy, but like you mentioned before First Contact was a great role for him, personally one of my favsBy MaddShadez
September 25, 2009 4:09 PM | Link to this
Allie D, you may be thinking of I, Robot. James Cromwell played the inventor of the robots in that movie.By Allie D.
September 25, 2009 10:49 AM | Link to this
AH! Ok, now I remember! I haven’t seen A.I. in a few years, but now I can totally see William Hurt’s character in my mind. Funny how I confused them that way. I see them as very similar actors, anyway, so I guess it wasn’t too far of a stretch. And yeah, I remember him in First Contact. I thought at any rate Cromwell had worn similar shoes at one time. lolBy Sir Critic
September 25, 2009 10:37 AM | Link to this
No, that was William Hurt. But Cromwell has played the inventor crackpot type before. See STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT. Funny that you mention “A.I.” and I mentioned “MINORITY REPORT.”By Allie D.
September 25, 2009 10:26 AM | Link to this
This is about what I expected, actually. If anything, it makes me want to check out the book. On a side note, didn’t Cromwell play the robot inventor in A.I. as well? lol