Set in the nearby future timeframe, the movie presents us with the scenario in which almost the entire world population uses robotic surrogates that look, walk and talk just as regular humans do, to perform their daily activities. From the safety of their home, humans can connect to these robots and carry on with their lives without ever worrying about their good looks, personal safety or the consequences of their actions. A utopia that shakes from its foundation when the destruction of a surrogate leads to the death of the man that was controlling it, thing considered impossible until then. In his investigation FBI agent Greer (Bruce Willis) unravels a conspiracy that threatens the life of millions in a universe plagued and crippled by the lack of human emotions.

Ok, now that you have everything you need to know in order to decide for yourself whether you wish to see the movie or not, and that the whole common, boring and nicely wrapped foreplay is out of the way, let’s play with this movie’s appendixes for some fun. There is only one natural way you could approach this, and that’s with the question: “Why does Bruce Willis wish to save the world… so many times?”. Honestly now, he is a decent actor to say the least and he could easily exploit his talent in roles more demanding than that of the cop with a mission. Many actors have approached this stereotype, made something out of it and then walked away. He, on the contrary, appears to be stuck in some sort of time loop, constantly cursed to repeat himself, like we didn’t understand it the first time around. Because don’t get me wrong, I don’t think his movies are bad, but the repetition drains them of all the fun.

Surrogates is no exception and you simply can’t shake the feeling of Die Hard déjà-vu. The movie comes with a plausible story – which is impressive for a Sci-Fi, with decent acting and it does have the rare quality of raising a couple of philosophical question. Nothing mind boggling, but still, the fact that at the end of the movie your brain has something to chew on for few minutes, at least gives you the feeling that you haven’t wasted your time. So you end up appreciating the movie more for this than for anything else it threw at you in the last 120 min. Which is probably its main problem: it fails to deliver something more than you could easily get by reading its synopsis.

Given your current choices of movies, Surrogates may prove to be your best way of spending an evening if you don’t have a girlfriend, dog, cat, computer, good book, gaming console, …oh never mind.