Bruce Willis: 'Surrogates'

Director Jonathan Mostow's new sci-fi thriller Surrogates, said Alonso Duralde MSNBC.com, "flirts with big ideas" about "the dangers of technology on the human soul, and the government's control over electronic communications." Centering on a rare murder in a futuristic world where most people stay at home and live their lives through android surrogates, this film, starring Bruce Willis, "is consistently entertaining," and "a much cooler examination of virtual living than the recent Gamer."

Surrogates is "a fairly clean, tight film that looks great," said Jeffrey M. Anderson in Cinematical, and it contains "the requisite number of car crashes and helicopter explosions." But it's really "more of a thriller than a cautionary tale, and it doesn't go very deep in either direction." And "ironically," Surrogates (watch the trailer) is "missing" the "human element—the movie has no concept that some people might see both the good and the bad in the surrogates."

The movie's "narrative and emotional engine operate as mechanically as the titular, dead-eyed glamazoids," said Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times, and Mostow "is a little too enamored with all the shiny, colorful surfaces and propulsive action" to effectively "develop a truly creepy speculative-future vibe." And in the end, Surrogate's "execution is strictly campy and adrenaline-driven."

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