When I read the book I knew at once that it was going to be adapted for the big screen. I was excited, thinking it’d be tech-noir or something even sweeter, oh I dunno, Hollywood happens to have some sharp minds. I was pretty sure they’d spare a few and give us Bladerunner 2009. Of course, everything is on the net nowadays, but I stayed away from reviews, trailers, teasers, blog entries even remotely hinting at anything related to the book. Good thing.

The movie could be a remix of any of the technothrillers from recent years, and casting Bruce Willis sort of reminds the viewer that the big screen adaptation wasn’t going to be cerebral, or pretend to be sophisticated say, Minority Report? Cmon, if anything this was gonna be Die Hard! But With Robots!

Despite that, Surrogates is an okay whodunit. We can go on for a while longer about how the script could’ve been written better, the screenplay, the effects, the acting. But just this once I’m fine with a little bit of Hollywood mostly-fluff mediocrity, although …I’m not exactly sure why.

I did enjoy this, but it did feel kind of derivative. The scenes (in the trailer!) of all the surrogates dropping at the same time was almost identical to the opening of FastForward last week; the living-through-surrogates plot was a natural progression from last week’s viewing of Gamer; and the human resistance crops up everywhere, really. So, nothing new under the sun!

That said, I find Bruce Willis immensely watchable, and the story was good enough and well enough conveyed. Not a classic, but fun enough!

The story was good, but the characters and theme could have been much better developed.

My review at Epinions.