Well it wouldn't be September without a few lame sci-fi action thrillers to pass us by on their way into bottom shelf irrelevancy. First there was Gamer, and now there is Surrogates in which Bruce Willis wears a bad wig and takes your money. There's a few good ideas floating around here and there, but its so determined to be a generic sci-fi action thriller that you eventually make your peace with it and allow it to be what its is. A painfully average and thus boring movie.
Surrogates presents a world in which robotic surrogates (title alert) are used by humans to conduct every day activity, while the humans control them psychicly from the safety of their own homes. Thus you can do all sorts of things that the propensity to get injured and die had previously prevented you from doing. There's a whodunit and a murder involved, but its so generic it doesn't merit precious synoptic space. Willis, who can be a good actor on his day, is not here and is a pitch perfect audience surrogate ( I'm working on a level of humor you couldn't begin to understand) in how uninvolved and bored he looks. Radha Mitchell is a plot device, James Cromwell is wasted as is Ving Rhames. Rosamund Pike has a couple of moments of non blandness I suppose, but I'd go far from calling them good really. Just less bad.
This is what happens when a movie takes a potentially interesting idea and insists on making it into a kids movie. Disappointing and disposable. Jonathan Mostow I can believe you directed Terminator 3.
Rating: 4/10
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