BOTTOM LINE: Sporting a visually slick look with great production values, “Surrogates” proves to be an otherwise dull, directionless and muddled affair, echoing previous films of the genre such as “Total Recall”, “I, Robot” and “Blade Runner” despite a premise that could have made for a unique film.

THE GOOD: “Surrogates” starts with the fascinating premise of humans using robot automatons to carry out the functions of every day life through an interface in to the brain. Humans no longer have to leave the house, jacked in to their surrogate who does all the physical work for them. Humanity hails the end of crime, disease and other pitfalls of life, but in doing so, begins to lose touch with itself. Enter homicide detective Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) who along with his partner Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell), are called in to investigate the death of a man via an overload from a weapon fired at his surrogate. When they discover that this weapon has the power to not only destroy surrogates but also their human hosts, they are thrown in to a web of treachery that takes them all the way to the inventor of surrogates “Canter” (James Cromwell). Using this futuristic premise and backdrop, director Jonathan Mostow manages to create a visually impressive film with a number of fantastically rich images. Much detail has also gone in to the creation of the surrogates, with each actor playing a surrogate looking noticeably plastic and unreal; Bruce Willis looks particularly strange in this make-up, although you may have to get past his odd haircut first. The film does cover themes of humanity’s loss to machinery and technology, with the film suggesting in the end that the only way we can re-discover ourselves is to pull the plug on all this wonderful technology we keep inventing and creating. The film has a handful of decent action scenes. “Surrogates” poses some interesting questions and does manage to introduce a fascinating idea at its core.

THE BAD: The film starts with a great idea but it is ultimately executed in a fairly pedestrian and unoriginal way. Director Mostow suffered the same issues with Terminator 3 in that the film seems to hit all the marks but does not create something more from it. Much of the problem lies in the setup of the film which gives an overview of the idea, but does not give an adequate setup for the Greer and Peters characters. Bruce Willis is not given much to do other than to continue emulating his Sixth Sense minimalist acting, and Radha Mitchell is made out to be nothing more than a beautiful prop. Thrown straight in to the deep end, the film does not seem to find its way until mid-way through the film when Greer begins to chase the makers of the surrogate-destroying weapon, but even then, the film manages to lose itself again with Greer taken out of the hunt, and then put back in again in a clumsy fashion. All of this suggests a poorly plotted script and no amount of flashy filmmaking techniques can make up for such a script. In the end, the film seems more like a clone of better films in the genre before it, and as such, is quite forgettable.