In the future robotic technology has been perfected and it has been made in such a way that these robots – known as surrogates – can be controlled with the operator’s mind. This technology eventually becomes mass produced for the mass market and now everyone uses it for everything and most people barely ever leave their homes as their real selves. Fourteen years after the creation of the technology the first ever murder of an operator via his surrogate has occurred and Tom Greer [Bruce Willis] is out to solve the case.
The greatest part of this movie is the idea. Just like in Gamer where we dealt with the idea of people living life through others instead of it being a videogame for a period of a few hours – or longer for those addicts – here it is actually your life. Are you living it or are you just watching it like as if you’ve become the star in your own movie? The answer is no; and the story definitely did try to explore the same idea of identity and all the philosophical thinking that would come with this concept. Would you like to live in a world where you’re not sure who the person you’re talking to is who they say they are? I guess this is where the social commentary comes in; since this future world is really a representation of what the internet is. People hide behind a screenname and indulge in their anonymity which allows them to be whoever they want to be. This is exactly the same as in this world, I do not have to be me anymore, I can be the confident cool guy that I’ve always wanted to be rather than the awesome movie nerd that I am. Then the question is: do people have the right to this anonymity – whether in the future with surrogacy or today on the internet?
The only problem with having such a great concept to set up a science fiction film is that the degree of awesome of the movie is now totally dependent on how well the writers and director actually explore this idea. So now we finally get around to why this movie isn’t any good. The movie introduced us to this shiny robot filled world and the director felt that if instead of exploring the actual ideas of the film he would rather send us on a stereotypical Hollywood adventure through this setting and only hint at the actual interesting stuff that this movie has to offer us. The closest Jonathan Mostow comes to delving into this idea of what we lose with every advancement in technology was when we would see Tom Greer attempt to connect with his wife, Maggie [Rosamund Pike], and see that she would refuse to see him face to face unless she was using her surrogate. I would have been perfectly happy if we were treated to a film which focussed only on that kind of a relationship in this science-fiction setting, instead of this adventure film with half-assed action sequences and a cliché plot.
The worst part of this film is that after around twenty minutes of the movie and you, the viewer, have figured out that the movie isn’t going to be that great and you begin to hope for fun action is that there is none. I felt almost that the writers needed, once they had decided on this robot filled premise, to have been locked in a room and repeatedly watch T2 and realise what you can do action wise once you have multiple robots on screen. You can even make it PG-13 – as you saw earlier this year with Terminator Salvation – since you can argue to the MPAA that there isn’t any blood on screen, only oil and rubber tubing.
This film is no better than any other lame want to be action film out there that Hollywood poops out every day. They slap on a familiar face – in this case Bruce Willis – to get the audience in the seats and I’m glad to say it didn’t work since the film seems to be tracking to be a complete flop after costing the studios near $80 million to produce and after being out for two weeks in the US has only made $18 million [numbers come via BoxOfficeMojo]. So please don’t watch this movie.
IMDB says 6.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes says 38%
I say 3.0/10