Plot: In a futuristic utopia, robots do all the work, and the people stay at home in their pajamas operating them. Just like "Second Life", all the robots are cooler and way more attractive then their real life masters. Not everyone likes the robot society and someone figures out how to kill the operator by shooting a fancy gun at the robot. FBI Agent Tom Green (Bruce Willis) and Agent Peters (Radha Mitchell) are FBI agents trying to track down the killers. The investigation quickly leads this leads to evil corporation VSI and its founder Dr. Canter (James Cromwell.)
Review: This movie is a murder mystery told with a Sci-Fi storyline. The science-fiction detail is pretty deep, but all the premises are in the first few minutes, and the geeky technology is not needed until the climax, which I won't give away. The premise is original, and the story flows naturally, with a few twists as we get closer to the identity of the bad guys.
Their are some really good chase scenes in the movie. The robots jump more realistically than in similar movies, and look less like CGI.
The acting of Bruce Willis and James Cromwell is excellent. I would like to have seen Tom Green and his wife interact in the real world.
The movie has a lot to say on a satirical level, For example, people only interact on-line, and this is an extreme form of people who spend all their evenings online especially in Second Life or in World of Warcraft.
In the movie, people put forward a different public face from their real selves that they keep hidden -- rather like people do psychologically. After her son dies, Maggie Greer, Tom's wife, (Rosamund Pike) never comes out of the synthetic world, despite Tom asking her to come.
Finally, the movie takes on the notion that the whole world is just an illusion like The Matrix, but also like some Eastern philosophy. In the surrogate world, people get reincarnated all the time.
Cast: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Ving Rhames, and James Cromwell
Crew: directed by Jonathan Mostow based on the graphic novel.
Rating: 3.0 flasks (just barely)
More: The action scenes are dramatic and bold, but the producers did not spend as much money on the robot costumes. The robots in Terminator or Star Wars are far more detailed; these seemed too simple and plastic.
Even more: The cover for the Surrogates, the graphic novel:
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