Review of Surrogates (2009) by Dawdlingpoet — 23 Nov 2021

This is a sci-fi movie along similar lines to The Matrix, Inception and I, Robot, with, I felt, the message behind it being to do with questioning how much we let technology control and take over our lives and how far out of control this could become in the future. The idea behind it is quite 'out there' although not new. Bruce Willis has appeared in other sci-fi movies in the past including The Fifth Element, although he's more well known for his roles in purely action or action drama movies such as Die Hard. Also featured in the cast is Radha Mitchell (who appeared in Pitch Black, Man on Fire (a brilliant movie!) and Finding Neverland) and Rosamund Pike (Made in Dagenham, Johnny English Reborn etc.).

This movie features plenty of action as well as the sci-fi aspects though, there is a good amount of visual effects which seem quite realistic and up to date, indeed the movie is pretty recent, from 2009. The plot is a bit quirky but it plays out quite well, the action scenes with fights, shooting, chases and the visual effects used to give these a bit more oomph, as it were. There's a decent cast and I felt it kept my attention throughout - the story itself is a bit confusing in parts but it doesn't matter too much, its easy enough to follow the general idea and its quite entertaining in general - it doesn't appear as if the cast are bored or just sleepwalking their way through the film, its quite 'animated' as it were, you could say it has a bit of a comic book feel to it, especially when I think of the few scenes showing the robotic skeletons as it were of some of the surrogates that are revealed at times.

This is a lively action sci-fi movie which is perhaps a bit zany for some but I felt that it was overall quite good fun - there isn't much in the way to offend people, there's a bit of violence but nothing too graphic, the visual effects making it have more of a comic book type feel to it. This movie has a rating of 12a, so its fine to show to teenagers but might potentially upset younger viewers. There is also some bad language and one or two scenes of whats categorised as sexuality, although again its nothing particularly graphic, its more funny if you've seen it and know what I mean (sexy robots - I'm guessing men wrote the script for this? lol). There is more of a serious question posed by the movie I suppose but then thats good for movies to have two sides to them, I think and its good that its entertaining and not overly preachy, while I felt it did make me think about the questions posed behind it somewhat. The cast all come across pretty enthusiastic and it doesn't drag on too much, compared to some more modern sci-fi movies such as Artifical Intelligence which is a slower movie that lasts over two hours I believe, this movie only just lasts an hour and a half - any longer and it might well have landed in the getting a bit tedious and too strung out category, which is a killer when it comes to such sci-fi movies to me anyway (though thats a personal preference/thing, of course).

This isn't a movie I'd heard of prior to seeing it listed on my TVs EPG as it was shown on TV recently, I presume it wasn't overly successful but I'm glad I recorded it - it certainly wasn't what I'd expected it to be about (expecting a movie about women carrying other couples human babies LOL) but having said that, I think its actually one of the better modern sci-fi action movies - I do tend to prefer sci-fi movies set on earth and this is, obviously, one of those. It looked like it was a rather fun movie to shoot and the cast are fairly enthusiastic, it comes across well and doesn't drag on much as I say, so this impressed me.

Yes, im happy to recommend this movie. The plot gets a little bit complicated in one or two points but its fairly easy to follow the main gist of it and the action scenes are quite entertaining - it isn't entirely bogged down in complicated background information like some sci-fi movies can be, its both entertaining and it carries relevant questions which we should probably all consider about our reliance on technology these days to live our lives and how more isolated our lives may be becoming, as we sit indoors using technology to communicate and achieve things (such as me sitting at home typing up this review to post online, I suppose). It doesn't come across as too much of a preachy movie, it is a little 'out there' but its also not *as* pretentious as perhaps you might have found similar movies such as The Matrix (which I felt was a bit too much for me, if you know what I mean!), so personally I thought this was pretty good, its a shame its not more well known.