Surrogates (2009)

It's up to Bruce Willis to save humanity once more in Jonathan Mostow's sci-fi thriller, based on the 2005-05 graphic novel The Surrogates. Set in a futuristic Boston, where humans more or less now live in isolation, choosing to live their life through idealised androids known as 'surrogates', from the safety of their own home. This seeming utopia is rattled by a murder, the first in years, of not only a surrogate, but the human that owns him, a feat thought impossible.

Bruce Willis' FBI Agent Tom Greggs, with the help of Radha Mitchell's Agent Peters, is assigned to track down the killer, and the films' first third is where it's at its strongest with Bruce Willis' surrogate sporting a bleach blonde wig as he performs his duty as an FBI agent, amongst some world building which is worryingly believable in its premise. The inventor of the surrogates is Older Canter, whose son is the victim of the film's opening murder. Despite the fact that he's played by the excellent James Cromwell, he's played almost this exact figure before- Alfred Lanning, the creator of U.S Robotics in Alex Proyas' I,Robot (2004).

Surrogates has some interesting ideas and chase sequences, but it feels far too close to I, Robot and it's not helped by the fact that I,Robot is a much better film that examines the morals of man against machine in a much more thorough and interesting way, helped by a charismatic performance from Will Smith. Although Willis is good playing his own surrogate, for the majority of the film his human form seems tired and bored by it all, and it falls to Rosamund Pike as his wife to provide most of the acting chops.

Having said that, Surrogates has aged well since its release in the sense that people more than ever are slowly becoming their own surrogates, living life through the screen of their mobile phones. During a sequence in the film where Willis' human form leaves his house for the first time in years, one is startled by the reality of his struggle to come to terms with it- take away everyone's phones today as they walk around, and they'd barely know what to do with themselves.

5.8/10