Surrogates ~ review

Surrogates takes us into a near possible future where people don't necessarily have to go out anymore. Instead, we have surrogates, robots that we control with our mind, to run our chores. To be more precise, the surrogates run our lives for us. Neat isn't it? Well, apparently not. Although it brings a lot of benefits, but it also degrades human connection and mentality.



The story focuses on Tom Greer, an FBI Agent, who's investigating a murder case. This is truly shocking in a society where murder does not happen thanks to the use of surrogates. To prevent it from happening again (and also to prevent panic among uninformed civilians), Greer together with his partner Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) investigate the murder that leads them to an even bigger conspiracy.



Surrogates is one of those films that I found to have an interesting trailer but not so on the movie itself. Set in a world with robots but not too elaborated like the one in I,Robot or even A.I., I find the concept of life in Surrogates to be fresh and fascinating. So obviously I did not have problem with the whole concept of the movie. What was disappointing for me is the lack of drive in the story. Take out the beautiful surrogates and explosive actions, and all you have left is a normal investigation story. Of course there are twists here and there in the plot but they do not seem to be enough to leveled up the mediocrity of the story. I think Surrogates could have been a better film if they could come up with a better plot.



But not all is bad for the film. For starters, it starred Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell. I really love both actors so seeing them being 'surrogated' is very interesting for me. And of course no complaints for their acting, I think they did good. All the other actors did pretty well too on their part, and that includes Ving Rhames as the Prophet, Rosamund Pike as Mrs Greer and James Cromwell as Dr. Lionel Canter.



Another prospect that I love about this movie is the make-up effects (yup, you read that right). You can really see the difference between the smooth-skinned-and-beautiful surrogates and the old-with-wrinkle-lines-and-imperfect-skins of their counterpart. It's very real and believable.

In general, Surrogates is just an okay movie. It's not so bad but not that good either. It could have been better. It was still an enjoyable watch and so I give 3 stars for the efforts.