Stream it now Surrogates

IMDb rating: 6.2 (102,993 votes)
IMDb ID: 0986263
Duration: 89 min
Release Date: September 25, 2009
Solar rating: 3 votes
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Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others' surrogates.


Thriller, Action, Sci-Fi produced in 2009 [USA]

 
 
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Nice sci-fi movie. It's short, which can be seen as a perk if you're short on time. 6.9/10
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I enjoyed it..no need to overthink the 'how can EVERYBODY afford a surrogate' angle. Kinda reminds me of The Matrix/iRobot or a mixture of both ..either way a 9/10 from me
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Brillant !!
9/10

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Brilliantly done, superb acting, really enjoyed this film. 9/10

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really great film and not as far fetched as it might seem, alot of very interesting ideas float around in here, definately worth watching!

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bruse willes has done it again!!!! great man and great movie. will repeat watching this movie today tomorrow and i'll get the oppertunity to do it tonight. so for those who are looking for a good time go watch this movie and enjoy cinemal at its best
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This movie was awesome! The plot was cool and moved along smoothly. It's one that will keep you interested until the very end. The ending was sort of predictable, but thats not to say it was a bad. Needless to say, if you're looking to get out of the house for a few hours this is worth investing time and money to go see.
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To use a quote from my review of Knowing: "a poorly-made film will usually draw your attention to flaws in (its) logic". In the movie Surrogates, nearly everyone in the world lives virtually through robot counterparts of themselves. These robots seem like they would be incredibly expensive and yet, even the poorest in society seem able to own one. It's all a metaphor for the world we enter when we log onto the internet (through virtual anonymity, people are able to assume any guise they wish). In a better movie, this premise would be used to show us the errors in impersonal interaction. Here, it's just an excuse to blow up some robots. Worst of all, at no point does it really justify it's anti-technology stance: any drawbacks to this surrogate system aren't explored, and neither are the benefits to living life as a regular person. It's simply taken for granted that we the audience will side with whatever it is they're trying to make us feel. To be honest, even the filmmakers themselves don't seem to know where their sympathies lie. One minute we're rooting for robot Greer (Bruce Willis) to catch the flesh-and-blood criminals (back to that in a moment), the next we're supposed to be rooting for the human terrorists to destroy the nation of robots. If we're to believe the movie's own premise or logic, these robots aren't really robots at all, they're merely vehicles that mankind has adopted. You no more feel sympathy for Greer's destroyed surrogate than you would for his destroyed motorcycle.

The movie presents a world where fragile humans are given worry-free bodies to parade around in. This allows them to jump off enormous buildings, get shot, or get into violent auto accidents without the fear of dying in real life. But someone has invented a ray gun that not only blows up their robot brains, it also blows their human brains up as well. In effect, this renders the robot surrogates nothing more than a gimmick in a standard conspiracy/murder mystery film.

Small camps of anti-surrogate technophobes sprout up around the country, led by the ridiculous "The Prophet" (Ving Rhames) and they present us with the alternative of living in hippy communes with horses and buggies rather than having super-powered robot bodies. They're obviously the bad guys, or are they? Someone has to be, and someone is responsible for inventing this evil ray gun (though even after seeing the movie, I'm still not sure who invented it). As the surrogate Greer chases down the real, live ray gun murderer, it becomes a sort of "bizarro" Blade Runner (what if Harrison Ford was the villain in that movie?), and the entire scene is of course stripped of any tension it might've had. After all, the hero Greer isn't directly involved in the chase, in fact he's not even there at all (he's at home, resting in a comfortable chair). When Greer's surrogate is destroyed in the battle with the technophobes, he meanders around his apartment and argues with his (severely disturbed) wife's surrogate, wishing she'd come out of her room and speak to him in person. But he's a hypocrite, as he himself never went anywhere without his surrogate until it was destroyed. The whole film is a mess of inconsistency though, both in plot and point. The movie pulls so many flip flops that in the end, the good guys are the bad guys and then they're not, except when they are. Who knows? I sure don't (Also, for some inexplicable reason, the ending is shown in the trailer, although it's the sort of ending you can see coming a mile away, so I'm not sure how much its spoiled by this). A film like this can be an entertaining way of killing some time, but it's just disappointing when it could've been something more substantial.
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Going into seeing this I was not particularly expecting much from it, at most maybe a nifty story followed by a big twist that changes everything you think about for 30minutes after you leave the cinema, maybe it was the Bruce Willis thing, not sure. At worst it could have been a overly complex plot with either too little substance, terrible build or any fitting climax, or even all of them as I've seen. As you could have guessed I was surprised with what I saw, it was by no means brilliant but does not in any way suck ass like it easily could have.

Sure as far as critisms and plot holes go it has its share from its genre, but its redeeming build of conspiracy laced plot, intense but not overused action scenes and a moral purpose that hit home with an internet and gaming addict such as myself definitely made up for its misgivings.

The plot itself is a neat and nice set up, with most of the situation is explained at the very beginning, it left almost no holes to be filled in during the later stages of the film which gave way for a clear and visible look at the story and its slow at times, fast at times, unfolding. Each of the major action scenes were all useful to the plot and were exactly what action scenes need to be, engaging and to the point, even the plot itself adds to them in vulnerability to the protagonist and thus the audience.

The jewel in this silver crown is its moral questions that for once in a action packed movie seem to make sense to me, not simply a new concept added to the Battle Royale formula that don't make sense together (Gamer comes to mind). These questions being the old but good 'How far is too far with technology?', 'what makes a human, human?' and 'What's the point of existing if you're not actually living? I could be looking into it a bit too much, but I like to think I'm not and I would like to think these appeal to people as much as they do to me.

A few nice touches are also enjoyable, being most of the extras are robots, it covers up what would have certainly been average acting, the length of the film is a nice 'Not too long, not too short' length and there being no groundbreaking twist in the final moments when I was expecting one definitely gave me a more real sense of what I just saw.

Overall its not an almost perfect piece of fused action and plot, such as 'The Dark Knight' (which seems to be my bench mark these days for action films) but it's still a nice mix and should you be near a cinema with your friends, you will most likely enjoy it.

4/5
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Surrogates.... I want one!

So the movie started out cool by showing a small introduction into the way that the Surrogates started. Then it continued to just take the thrill ride out of the park. Other then I guessed a few parts of the movie here. But it was not a predictable movie from the start. But they show you everything that you need to know to figure the secret out and if your smart then your going to figure it out half way into the movie. It was a fun movie, the special effects were really great and they made Bruce Willis very young. Over all I would maybe buy it when it comes out on DVD to watch the special features of how it was made but I don't know if I would go see it again in theaters. Once is enough to satisfy you where you were not really wanting more and by seeing it again your fulfilled even more.

My rating is 4/5 for Effects, 4/5 for story, and 3/5 for everything else.

CrunkReview : Richard
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