Surrogates Sucks

Surrogates is one of the most mediocre films of Bruce Willis’ career. There’s surprisingly little action, his character is unbelievably underdeveloped, the whole story is derivative and it gropes all over the place. The film is slapped together and fragmented in a way that screams serious post-production tinkering. I guarantee you this thing went through test screening after test screening, re-edits, re-shoots and concerned memos from angry studio executives. This is only the second time I’ve ever walked out of the theater at the end of a Bruce Willis movie feeling dirty and despondent, the first time having been The Whole Ten Yards in 2004.

It pains me to say all of this, because Bruce Willis is one of my boys. I’ve watched him my whole life and he has provided me with an infinite amount of entertainment and happiness. I own most of his movies, and quote dialogue from his signature character John McClane on a daily basis. Bruce is one of the key forces that have driven me to want to make movies. I think that he’s one of the most charismatic and versatile actors working today, and has always been so throughout his 25+ year career. He can do any genre: drama, family comedy, dark comedy, thriller, war film, sci-fi, and of course, action. Bruce makes my favorite kind of movie: the character-driven action movie, which is becoming more and more rare these days. Watching Bruce Willis playing a cop is one of the supreme cinematic pleasures in my book, no matter how many times he does it. I would watch Bruce Willis in any movie, and I would watch him play cops until he’s 135 years old. I just can’t get enough of it; Die Hard, The Last Boy Scout, Hostage, 16 Blocks, you name it, I love it.

Before I saw Surrogates, if someone told me that I would walk out of a Bruce Willis cop movie and not like it, I would have said you were full of it. But it’s true: Surrogates is really quite crappy. It’s only about 90 minutes long. When a movie is that short, it usually means it has a weak plot. I’ve seen plenty of trailers for the movie, but very little else in terms of marketing. I haven’t seen or read any interviews with Bruce about the movie, so I’m betting he knows it sucks too, and that’s a real shame, especially as this movie comes off the heels of Live Free or Die Hard, the long-awaited and successful fourth Die Hard chapter.

The basic premise of the movie is that in the future, some mad scientist guy named Canter (because there is always one of those) played by James Cromwell invents these robot surrogates. People stay at home in these virtual reality shows and send their surrogates out into the world to live their lives. The idea is that people can all look like supermodels and do whatever they want to do without there being any danger or personal risk to their actual selves. As a result, the world crime rate has gone down to virtually zero, and there hasn’t been a homicide in years. Wait, wasn’t there no murder in Minority Report? And wasn’t there also no murder in I, Robot? And didn’t James Cromwell play the exact same scientists creator guy in that movie? Yes to all of the above.

But when Canter’s son is murdered through his surrogate, which is supposed to be impossible, Bruce’s Agent Greer  and his partner Agent Peters (Radha Mitchell) are called in to investigate. Now what do we know about this character? Well he’s a cop and he has a tragic past because his son was killed. It’s such a cookie cutter way of trying to create a sympathetic character. How many times have we seen this, a loner/cop/tough guy with a tragic past because his wife/son/family was killed? We’ve seen it in Stargate, we’ve seen it in Lethal Weapon, we’ve seen it in Minority Report once again. I could go on and on. Surrogates does not dare to be creative. Not to mention, the entire theme of how technology corrupts and how we’re too reliant on it, and just generally using machines as a device to explore what it means to be human has been completely done to death. Nothing can ever compare to The Terminator, not even the original Matrix, both of which are infinitely better movies than Surrogates.

Here’s the most surprising disappointment of the movie: there is a very small amount of action. How can you have a Bruce Willis cop movie with so little action? The trailer makes it look action-packed, but all the action there is in the movie is in the trailer. I couldn’t believe it. And a lot of what little action there is sucks because it all revolves around Bruce’s superhuman surrogate who can leap and fly like Superman. Why should I care about an invulnerable robot? I want to see Bruce kicking ass in a realistic or at least semi-believable manner. You get very little of that in Surrogates.

Then the movie just ends. I was an early fan of director Jonathan Mostow. His Breakdown is a perfectly-crafted thriller, and U-571 was very well done too. But since then he ruined the Terminator franchise with Terminator 3, and now we have…this. It’s also the same writers of Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation, and the masterpiece that is Catwoman. How do these guys keep getting their scripts sold?

On a side note, this entire movie was shot in and around Boston in 2008, and when they were filming, I careened all over the city trying to stalk Bruce Willis and beg him for a job. Hell, just to see him in person I would have wet my pants. I love that man. But this movie sucks. The most enjoyable part for me was recognizing several of the locations where they shot at and knowing that I have walked some of the same parts of the earth as Brucey baby.

Bruce is good in this movie, he has a couple of very emotional scenes with his estranged wife where he displays that minimalist charisma of his that is one-of-a-kind. Hell, the whole cast is talented. Radha Mitchell I’ve liked since I saw her in Man on Fire, Ving Rhames is an interesting guy, as is James Cromwell. But they’re all wasted, and even a couple of fairly clever plot twists can’t save this mess of a movie. My advice: skip this one, stay home and watch Hostage and 16 Blocks, or if you really want some sci-fi Bruce, check out the masterpiece 12 Monkeys or even The Fifth Element.