I didn't have very high expectations for Surrogates for several reasons. It was a box office bomb that didn't even make back in the U.S. half of what it cost to produce. This was from the director of Terminator 3, which is considered the worst of that series. On top of all that, it is less than 90 minutes long.

In my review of Law Abiding Citizen, I commented on how the trailer showed way too much of the movie. The trailers for this movie were also guilty of giving away the ending. There's a scene in the trailer where it shows a whole bunch of people fall down simultaneously in a busy city street. That's from the climax of the film - and they show it in the friggin' trailer! Why do that? It's no wonder this movie bombed because if you saw the trailer then you already know how it will end.

The story here is set in the future where people use robotic surrogates to live their lives. It's sort of like a nice version of The Matrix where instead of being stuck in a fake dream world, people jack into their surrogates and control them mentally. What happens is somebody has a weapon that can destroy the surrogate in a way that also kills the controller. Since pretty much the whole world is using surrogates, such a weapon poses to be a major threat to everyone.

Bruce Willis plays a police detective sent to investigate the murders, and the main suspects are part of a surrogate resistance movement led by humans who live in slums like the aliens in District 9. As the investigation continues, it seems that someone very high up in authority is behind the whole deal, but nobody can quite figure out who and why since your surrogate can look like most anything. When Willis has his surrogate destroyed and is forced to go out into the real world as himself, he starts to question the whole lifestyle.

I thought this movie had a neat story, but it was too short to fully develop the setting in a way that made it more believable. It could have used a little extra time to flesh things out (pun intended) with how things work concerning humans and surrogates. There was at least a few good action sequences even though the CGI was questionable. I did like the way it questions people who use fake identities like we do online to hide behind their true self.

I also had a problem with the direction. Even simple conversations between two people used weird cuts and angles like a bunch of reshoots were done. It just didn't have any flow to it. In the end, Surrogates is decent science fiction movie that suffers from its own brevity. It's basically just a B-grade sci-fi movie with a (former) A-list star that tries to be too fast paced and comes off seeming like something was missing.

Recommended: Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older