Movie Review - Surrogates (2009)

Starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Ving Rhames, and James Cromwell
Directed by Jonathan Mostow

Set in the near future, Surrogates depicts a life where nearly every human never leaves their homes, instead living their life through the robotic title characters. Crime has decreased tremendously, but there is a small sanction of humans who are against the rise of surrogacy. When a weapon is created that manages to ruin the mechanics of the surrogate and kill the human who is controlling them, FBI agents Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) try to solve the case before too much havoc occurs.

After a rather promising initial twenty minutes setting up the premise of the film (I rather liked the opening credits sequence detailing the history of the surrogate program), the film falls apart. First off, the film looks like crap. Incredibly obviously filmed on a studio backlot, the film reminded me of cheesy 80s/90s sci-fi films like Total Recall...and in this case, that's not a good thing. I will say, to the director's credit, he did keep this flick moving at a pretty fast pace. It never really got dull...but it never really gave me an opportunity to give a shit about anything onscreen either.

The flick was horribly acted across the board. I realize that these people are playing robots without emotions, but it was ridiculously bad. How am I supposed to care about these people if they aren't emoting at all? And when they do emote, it's laughable. And Radha Mitchell's Australian accent kept coming in and out. This was probably one of the worst acting ensembles assembled this year.

So, after a somewhat promising start, this one fell apart during the last hour.

The RyMickey Rating: D