Surrogates

[George Bellefontaine]

It's the future and people live in near isolation while their surrogate robots do all their everyday chores. Detective Bruce Willis comes out of isolation for the first time in years to find out the answer to who and why is someone killing off surrogates.

If you're a Willis fan like me, you'll like this sci-fi flick, but others may find it lacking, which it is to some degree. There are similiarities to I ROBOT, but all in all I found it to be entertaining enough to enjoy future viewings.

Gorgeous blu-ray transfer and hot audio.

:T

[1oldguy]

Thanks for the heads up.It was only last night i was thinking of picking this up.i just may do so for the weekend.

[Ovation]

I find the premise quite interesting so I'll be checking it out when I have time. Good to know it got your seal of approval, George.

[Brandon B]

So if we're judging it solely on the Willis-meter, how would it compare to:

Striking Distance?
Whole Nine Yards?
Mercury Rising?
Fifth Element?
Die Hard?

Those are pulled out of my . . .mind, as a 1-5 scale of bad to good on said meter. 1 and 2 maybe ought to be swapped, not sure.

[krips]

Unbreakable? 11 Blocks (or whatever number).

[David Meek]

We're heading to the mainland tomorrow, so while I'm picking up the I, Robot Blu-Ray I may just grab this one, too. Bruce still has a way of getting me to enjoy a movie - thinking Tears Of The Sun here. Thanks Sir George. :T

[Chris D]

I think ANYTHING is awesome compared to Unbreakable. (what a stinker of a movie, and it actually had a LOT of potential)

I'm somewhat interested in this movie too, so it's going on my Netflix list.

I find it interesting that many movies are suddenly going with the "Avatar" idea.

[George Bellefontaine]

So if we're judging it solely on the Willis-meter, how would it compare to:

Striking Distance?
Whole Nine Yards?
Mercury Rising?
Fifth Element?
Die Hard?

It doesn't, really. It's an older, more weather-beaten Willis, and in this film, his acting approach is much more serious with none of the wise-cracks.

[Ovation]

I think ANYTHING is awesome compared to Unbreakable. (what a stinker of a movie, and it actually had a LOT of potential)

I'm somewhat interested in this movie too, so it's going on my Netflix list.

I find it interesting that many movies are suddenly going with the "Avatar" idea.

I actually quite enjoy Unbreakable, but, different strokes…

I'm not sure these other films are "copying" the Avatar idea so much as the idea has reached a level of mainstream popularity. And there many examples of films released close to each other with the same basic premise that were not "copies"--Dante's Peak and Volcano, Deep Impact and Armageddon… I think when something like Avatar has such huge popularity, it gets people to notice similar themes. A bit of searching often reveals precursors to such popular films--Dark City explores a lot of the same ideas as The Matrix but I don't recall anyone suggesting The Matrix was a "copy" at the time.

I think the "copy" effect will be going forward (films produced after Avatar's release).

[Brandon B]

Dark City explores a lot of the same ideas as The Matrix but I don't recall anyone suggesting The Matrix was a "copy" at the time.

Actually I remember a whole website devoted to dissecting the "blatant plagiarism" that was up back in 2001.

[Alloroc]

Unbreakables... I enjoyed that one.

Surrogates was weak. I mean I get where they wanted to go with this - as in an evolution of the online avatar. Zeitgeist. I read the comic book series "The Surrogates" a few years back and enjoyed that (so it is quite an original story). But this movie was lacking somthing. I just felt disengaged from it - although slick it felt 'movies by numbers'.

PQ, SQ and CGI top drawer - worth a rent but that's it. It could have been so much better.