Calling "Surrogates" mechanical may be too obvious but there's no getting around the fact that this sci-fi saga about androids taking the place of humans in the outside world is a lackadaisical effort. An adaptation of Robert Venditti and Brett Weldelethe's graphic novel, Jonathan Mostow's dystopian yarn aims to be a thinking man's blockbuster a la cinematic translations of Philip K. Dick's works, using moral dilemmas to decorate its main mystery, but succeeds only insofar as it at least keeps things sporadically entertaining when it abandons deeper issues for requisite extravaganza.
After the U.S. Supreme Court has voted to approve an alternate world introduced by a flustered inventor (James Cromwell), society has instantly embraced "surrogates," human-like robots attached to the brains of an "operator." Thus, Tom Greer, a haggard fed who can barely stand up, can look like a creepily unsullied Bruce Willis in perpetually diffused lighting and chase an accused murderer like a triathlete in steroids. But an anti-surrogates coalition led by Ving Rhames' "The Prophet" has been staging a protest over what they claim as an abomination of nature, and whether coincidence or not, an operator was killed when its surrogate was blasted by a classified weapon. The unprecedented incident throws law enforcers -- all surrogates as well -- into turmoil, putting them in a race against time to solve the murder case before someone does a surrogate genocide.
John Brancato and Michael Ferris' run-of-the-mill screenplay regularly conks out every time it feigns interest in shaping Greer's character through a traumatic past and a distant wife, mauling the point on humanity's distorted view through canted camera angles and simplistic moralizing. Mostow sporadically supplies the proceedings with wee bit of genuine tension, though his latest craft lacks the awesome factor that heightened the wonderment of his yet another robots-meet-humans film "Terminator 3." A character claims that the world has forgotten how to experience life, perhaps alluding to this clunk of cipher that's perfectly satisfied to play safe and play dead.
After the U.S. Supreme Court has voted to approve an alternate world introduced by a flustered inventor (James Cromwell), society has instantly embraced "surrogates," human-like robots attached to the brains of an "operator." Thus, Tom Greer, a haggard fed who can barely stand up, can look like a creepily unsullied Bruce Willis in perpetually diffused lighting and chase an accused murderer like a triathlete in steroids. But an anti-surrogates coalition led by Ving Rhames' "The Prophet" has been staging a protest over what they claim as an abomination of nature, and whether coincidence or not, an operator was killed when its surrogate was blasted by a classified weapon. The unprecedented incident throws law enforcers -- all surrogates as well -- into turmoil, putting them in a race against time to solve the murder case before someone does a surrogate genocide.
John Brancato and Michael Ferris' run-of-the-mill screenplay regularly conks out every time it feigns interest in shaping Greer's character through a traumatic past and a distant wife, mauling the point on humanity's distorted view through canted camera angles and simplistic moralizing. Mostow sporadically supplies the proceedings with wee bit of genuine tension, though his latest craft lacks the awesome factor that heightened the wonderment of his yet another robots-meet-humans film "Terminator 3." A character claims that the world has forgotten how to experience life, perhaps alluding to this clunk of cipher that's perfectly satisfied to play safe and play dead.