Rating of
2.5/4
"Surrogates" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 09/26/13
In the near future, the population has taken to living their own lives vicariously through the use of robotic avatars but when an assassin starts destroying the machines and their users with a top secret weapon, a lone FBI agent begins to question the value of his isolated, second hand life. The premise of Surrogates has a lot of promise; it's clearly a parody of the logical conclusion of social media and the obsession with superficial appearance and the decreasing face to face interactions of everyday life. In this it is reminiscent of the work of Philip K. Dick with a dash of Isaac Asimov. In fact the story plays out like a darker, seedier version of I, Robot but in a lot of ways it just isn't quite dark enough. Bruce Willis brings the same kind of desperation and vulnerability he brought to Twelve Monkeys which works really well but the studio's desperation to snag that 12 certificate compromises the script somewhat, leaving a halfway house between clever social commentary and generic sci-fi action thriller that makes it feel a little uneven. It's certainly not bad though, and it's certainly a lot smarter and more entertaining than the average Michael Bay debacle.
