Surrogates (Jonathan Mostow, 2009)

With: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Ving Rhames, James Cromwell

Plot: In an alternate present day, everyone stays at home and conducts their business in the outside world via a surrogate robot, when the impossible happens and the destruction of a surrogate kills its operator, cop Tom Greer (Willis) is assigned to get to the bottom of things.

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Too short, too thin and too busy sprinting towards the ending to be particularly convincing or entertaining. The concept is quite strong, suggesting a world where paranoia and technology have converged and effectively cocooned society, but there's not a single decent character here and it never manages the excitement or streamlined mystery of I, Robot, which this film strongly resembles (right down to casting James Cromwell as the well-meaning inventor of doom). There aren't enough details to flesh out what would be a vastly changed world and the fact that Willis sleepwalks through the whole thing makes it even harder to engage with. It's still perfectly watchable, the subtle effects that define the surrogates are quite hypnotic, but despite the intriguing set-up, this is as humdrum a sci-f-fi actioner as you could imagine.

50