Surrogates, directed by Jonathan Mostow (Ashlyn)

I did not have high hopes for this film. Mostow directed Terminator 3, and for that I can never really forgive him. Bruce Willis is a great actor- The Fifth Element! Die Hard! Sixth Sense! Look Who's Talking! - but he occasionally does some pretty dumb stuff (Cop Out? Ugh...) and this looked like it might've been for him what Battlefield Earth was for John Travolta. Thankfully, everyone involved (except Travolta in Battlefield Earth) did a good job.

Surrogates is centered around Tom Greer, who lives his life as a police detective and unhappily married man largely through the eyes of his robot self. Nearly the entire world is sitting in a “stim chair” all day while their “surrogates” live their lives, making the crime and infectious disease rates plummet. The real people are basically experiencing everything their robot personae do, except they can disconnect any time. Then somehow, a group of anti-surrogate renegades get their hands on a device that kill both the robot and the user at home.

Well, poop.

Willis and Radha Mitchell have great chemistry as the long-married couple who can barely look at each other after the death of their young son in a car accident before surrogates were as widely used. There's a great back story on how surrogates became what they are, and a lot of politics got 98% of the population using them- just like what I guess would happen if we had them. The action is pretty standard, but the dramatic parts and character development are what really kept me watching. This movie is good sci fi.

All in all, I'd put this at a solid 7 out of 10- not the greatest movie of all time, but thoroughly entertaining fare with a few good warning points about staring at the computer playing WoW all day.