Surrogates

It's the future and mankind lives an isolated existence, their only interaction is through perfect robotic versions of themselves which they control from home and live their lives through. This revolutionary way of life has become the norm, making homicide and other crimes almost non-existent. When someone is murdered while connected to their surrogate, detective Bruce Willis (I forget the characters name) sets out to discover how and why this unprecedented set of events took place.

Pretty cool and original idea in some ways (society living through surrogate robots) , very unoriginal in others (minds plugged into machines, hello Matrix), in the end it just doesn't quite fulfill its potential. Although the idea of everyone having their brain connected to ultra-realistic, robotic versions of themselves is kind of creepy and makes your mind wander with the possibilities, that wandering leads you to question some of the basic rules that this futuristic society lives with and kind of distracts from the story. Which story feels very much like I, Robot meets The Matrix, although there is some interesting social commentary on how we've become so connected to our phones, computers, ipods, video games and tv's and less connected as human beings. There's some fun action and enough intrigue to keep you into it, but it's nothing too amazing.

** out of 4 - Rentable (PG-13 for language, violence, brief drug and sex scenes)