The basic plotline follows Agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis), an FBI Agent living in a world where virtually everyone in the world uses robotic versions of themselves to live their lives to the full. You can be who you want, whenever you want. You feel no pain, and you can do everything humanly possible. Greer is uncomfortable with this new world, as he continues to feel attached from his surrogate loving wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike.) In an unusual event in this crime free world, a homicide occurs where the controller of a surrogate is killed alongside his robotic form. This make Greer and his partner, Agent Peters (Radha Mitchell) must discover who's killing off the surrogates, and why.
Although a lot of fun to watch, with many superb action sequences and some beautiful cinematography, Surrogates regularly fails to engage the audience for lengthy periods of time, despite only being 88 minutes long. The scenes involving heavy dialouge may believe themselves to be smart and sophisticated, and sometimes they can be, but for the majority of the time, the lines are cheesy and so predictable, making for uncomfortable viewing at times.
The performances are horrendeous from some of the supporting cast, too. Bruce Willis is enjoyable enough, and Rosamund Pike can act (you wouldn't know it from this performance) but the rest aren't really worth noting. Radha Mitchell does throw herself into those action sequences though.
Some of the CGI used is ropey, and a bit GI Joe esque, although the budget ($80M) is much lower than Joe's $175M. Still this is very enjoyable as a dumb action movie, and better than Transformers 2 in this genre. For that reason, I give it 3 out of 5 for substance, and 4 out of 5 for action.
*Thanks to VUE Cinemas for their continued support with my reviews*
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