SURROGATES (2009) - FIRST REVIEW

By Graham Young on Sep 25, 09 03:40 PM

SURROGATES (12A)
Verdict: ++++

WELCOME back to the big time... Bruce Willis!

Apart from 16 Blocks (2006) and Die Hard 4.0 (2007) and subsequent fun cameos in What Just Happened and Planet Terror, we haven't seen much of the big man in recent years.

Now 54, he first cemented his indelible stardom with Die Hard in 1988 and this November it will be exactly a decade since his last stand-out movie, The Sixth Sense.

Today he's returning again to prove that he's got a Keanu Reeves-like ability to come up with a career-prolonging movie...

If you like sci-fi thrillers Westworld, Total Recall, Minority Report and I, Robot then plug yourself into Surrogates, which, one imagines, is just the sort of film that The Sixth Sense director M Night Shyamalan wishes he could return to instead of coming up with drivel like The Happening.

As well as marking the return of Willis - at the double! - this 88-minute thriller is more interesting for the ideas within than the actual thrill of the chase.

Rather like people today keep relying on emails, text messages and mobile phones to communicate instead of talking to each other properly, the central concept is that humans now interact via their robotic surrogates.

As well as ensuring a crime-free utopia, they're better looking than their real counterparts (the surrogate Willis is a remarkably youthful-looking dead ringer for Gary Newbon when he was first making his name with ITV Sport).

But, when the son of the surrogates' inventor is murdered, FBI agent Greer (Bruce Willis) is forced to risk his life by leaving home for the first time in years to investigate...

Intercut with the opening credits, the countdown-prologue is a fabulous, complementary alternative to Peter Jackson's current hit, District 9.

Like the space race, it shows how new technology developed to protect the military has filtered across society faster than the iPod revolution... and with all the dangers that over-dependency brings.

But as the tagline says: 'How can you save humanity when the only thing real is you?'

Adapted from author Robert Venditti and illustrator Brett Weldele's graphic novel by screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Brancato, Surrogates is directed by their Terminator 3 master, Jonathan Mostow, who also made the underrated Breakdown.

The cast includes Babe star James Cromwell as Canter, a very James Cameron-lookalike inventor, with Ving Rhames playing The Prophet like a dolled-up version of former soccer star Ruud Gullit.

While lacking a real villain, Surrogates will be fresh enough for sci-fi veterans and an exciting genre introduction for teenagers alike.

If you are remotely tempted to take anybody under 12 along, do note, though, that two head-kicking scenes might have warranted a 15 certificate.

Is it any surprise that society is like it is when the censors at the BBFC so readily pave the way for immature brains to watch this sort of repugnant violence?

Website: www. chooseyoursurrogate.com/