After watching the trailers for Surrogates, I couldn’t decide whether this was just another rehashed, tired sci fi plot or whether it had the potential to take these familiar elements in a new and unique direction. The movie came and went in theaters without as much as a whimper, but as many people know the time a film spends in theaters isn’t always indicative of the quality of the movie. Surrogates recently arrived on DVD and I decided to check it out. I went in with little to no expectations and sadly I still wound up being dissappointed.

The film starts out very promising with an amazing introductory credits sequence. The opening credits feature a bit of a montage that brings you up to speed with the whole technology behind surrogacy. Surrogacy is when humans use a matrix type chair to control their robotic counterparts, whom they use for all of their interactions in society. The technology was originated for military use in which soldiers could command their robotic counterparts to fight their battles for them, successfully reducing the number of human casualties in wars. Perhaps the single greatest benefit of surrogates is that there is no risk to the human operator. If the surrogate is damaged or destroyed, the operator is left unscathed. In the future, humans have become entirely dependent on surrogates. People have become overly reliant on using their surrogates to go out in the real world and basically live their lives for them.

Not all humans support the use of surrogates. There is a faction of humans who refuse to use surrogates, seeing them as an abomination. They choose to be segregated from ‘mainstream’ society, choosing to live on the outskirts in “human only” areas. When someone starts murdering surrogates, resulting in their individual owners dying as a result, Detective Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is called in to investigate. What starts off as a fairly original take on a familiar premise soon turns into an exercise in uninspired repitition.

While the opening credits showed quite a bit of promise, what follows is a predictable, murder by numbers mystery that is easily given away within the first hour of the movie. There are a few plot twist, but nothing to really make you care about any of the characters. The movie features Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, and throwback villain James Cromwell. Not many will recognize Cromwell by name alone, but once you see his face you’ll immediately identify him with one of his previous “conspiracy” characters. In fact, his character here is incredibly similar to the character he played in the also similar and far superior ‘I-Robot’. Its a pity that Cromwell has been used so often in these type roles, as once he shows up you already almost instantly suspect him of wrong doing. Overall, the acting in this film isn’t bad, but the movie is just the mediocre sum of a bunch of mediocre parts.

I didn’t expect this film to be life changing or anything in fact I had the bar set relatively low. Unfortunately, the movie was way below my already low expectations. Maybe it is because I have seen so many other films with similar ideas that have been executed so much better than Surrogates. I would only recommend this as a rental if you are really looking for something to watch. If not, you may want to wait until it finds its way to cable unless you have a surrogate who can sit down and watch this movie for you.