Surrogates

It’s fall, traditionally the season for thoughtful movies like Finding Forrester (or as I like to call it, Good Will Hunting II) and A Beautiful Mind. So what am I in the mood for? A good shoot `em up, explosive summer blockbuster. I want it to be short and sweet, containing at least one scene where a man rescues a woman while an exploding car rockets through the air behind them, and end in the quiet, gold-backlit scene of relief where we realize the man and the woman who have just met will now be in love forever.

I thought Surrogates would fit the bill, being a 90-minute thriller with Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a sci-fi thriller, long on plot and VERY short on dialogue and depth. Willis’ acting didn’t disappoint, but it was clearly a big budget /big star/big fat B movie. It would not have been so bad if they hadn’t taken themselves so seriously, or if Willis had been allowed his trademark dry one-liners.

The one thing that surprised me was the originality of the romance. Willis and his costar, Rosamund Pike (Jane from Pride and Prejudice), had great chemistry despite their difference in age. Their relationship embodied the adult feeling of painful, tender, hard-fought intimacy rather than the hot-to-trot lust portrayed in many movies. However, it wasn’t enough to make the 90 minutes time well-spent.

See Surrogates only if you want to ask yourself this question: “I wonder if there’s anything else they could possibly have done to make this movie worse?”

For a good shoot `em up flick with depth, rent 310 to Yuma. For an adrenaline-packed, explosive show, I recommend Live Free or Die Hard, or one of my personal favorites, Eagle Eye.