Surrogates (2009)

Directed by Jonathan Mostow
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Starz)

This film is overflowing with good ideas, mostly unrealized. In a futuristic world real people stay indoors and live out their lives connected by computers to their "surrogates", lifelike robots, through which they can see, hear and apparently feel everything. The robots, all young and beautiful, are practically indestructible. Their operators are portrayed as old, without make up, wearing robes or pajamas. Enter Bruce Willis, an FBI operative who "goes to work" each day by lying down in his "stem chair" and connecting to his surrogate. Somebody has found a way to not only destroy surrogates, but kill their operators as well. The film goes all wrong by turning into a futuristic NCIS, with Willis and partner digging through files and enlarging photos for clues. It's really hurt by the action sequences, as robots climb walls and jump from roof to roof of moving cars using impossible physics. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It's also bathed in that modern teal and orange palette and overexposure that is the hallmark of almost every new film that desperately wants to be "edgy". Little do the filmmakers realize it does exactly the opposite.