Surrogates - Competent little sci-fi number

Yeah, I know, Bruce Willis may be a bit past his sell-by date.  He’s hardly the box office draw he once was.  And, yes, he does tend to exhibit a noticeable sneer/smirk throughout most of his most recent roles, but give him a chance here.  He’s not so bad.

Surrogates set in the future when we all have robots to carry out our menial chores – all of apart from wise-cracking cop, played by Will Smith, who is hell-bent on proving that our robot ‘protectors’ are not what they seem.  Oh, wait, that’s not the plot for Surrogates at all – that’s the plot for ‘I Robot.’ Never mind – just take out the word ‘robots’ and replace it with, er, ‘surrogates’ (which are basically robots) and you have the storyline.

If you haven’t seen I Robot, Surrogates may be quite original, but I couldn’t believe how similar the two were.  But I still enjoyed it.  I put in my review title that it was a competent LITTLE sci-fi number.  That’s largely because it’s quite short for a film – coming in well below the average hour and a half.  And, because of this, it’s over pretty quickly, almost like a TV episode of some sci-fi show.

It has action, conspiracy, reasonably special effects and Bruce Willis isn’t that annoying.  In fact, his – how should I put this – ‘mature’ action hero status actually works here.  The human race all have (surrogate) robots shaped like them who go out into the world under their human master’s control.  Naturally, everyone’s surrogate is young and gorgeous while their human owner’s body gets older and flabby from the comfort of their home.  It’s quite amusing when Bruce’s beautiful bot gets beaten up and the ‘real’ human Bruce has to go out onto the streets with his bald head and wrinkles for all to see.

All of this means that if you’re a fan of the sci-fi genre you should get something out of this film.  It’s one of those films that you like more if you haven’t had to pay for.  If you can borrow it off a mate or find it as part of your online TV package, give it a go.  It will definitely kill just over an hour of your time, but you probably wouldn’t have wanted to pay full price in the cinema to see it.  Oh, and it’s also advisable not to watch I Robot before you see this (it’s definitely superior – sorry, Bruce).

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that