Thursday, September 17, 2009

Movie Preview: Surrogates

What if you were to take the themes of WestWorld and The Matrix, add in a waldo (not the character) and some I Robot (the book not the substandard movie), what might you get? Well these are likely sources that helped to create Surrogates.

The concept is hardly new. We have a world of luxury, or so it seems. A future where people are even more removed from interacting with each other than we do know with the internet. Almost a world like Logan’s Run, separated from everything around us – effectively in a trap of our own creation.

Suddenly this “ideal” world has a serious problem. Our hero, Bruce Willis, is an unwilling piece in a series of events that move towards a revelation that will affect everyone. And the punch-line will be either anti-climactic or dead-on.



Considering the normally successful choices of films Bruce Willis has been in over his career (once he got past his first film) this film starts on a good foot. The addition of Ving Rhames is another plus to the film. Robots and a decent amount of action can’t hurt either.

But this film will be more plot heavy than most sci-fi these days. I expect that the first 15 minutes will be critical for the film, much like in Blade Runner. So keeping the plot holes small will be very critical to it being a good movie.

The look of the film is pretty consistent with most futuristic films these days. Nothing special there. And the special effects look to be lighter than most on the CGI front, which I find to be a bonus.

I can’t say that I want to run out and see this film. But I’m not dreading the fact that I will review this either. Thus this is a middle of the field movie. Likely to be worth the time of fans of sci-fi and Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames (unless Rhames has a mostly cameo role – which seems likely). But it’s all down to the writing on this one.

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