Bruce Willis stars in “Surrogates” as an FBI agent investigating terror attacks that are killing the surrogate robots and their operators. It's been a pretty solid year for science-fiction films thus far, with movies like "Moon," "District 9" and "Watchmen" all raising the bar for thoughtful futuristic tales on the big screen in one way or another. While this is great news for movie goers, it's unfortunate for a filmmaker who is trying to put together a big budget action/sci-fi flick later in the year that has any hope of measuring up.

Case in point: "Surrogates" director Jonathan Mostow, who finds himself faced with the unenviable task of following all of the aforementioned films, in addition to a whole summer's worth of massive special effects blockbusters.

This movie asks us to imagine a world where the majority of the population has given up face-to-face interaction with their fellow humans, and instead chosen to hide behind realisticlooking, thought-controlled robots known as "surrogates", which carry out their daily routines for them.

Things get a bit sticky when a suspected terrorist group creates a weapon that can not only disable a surrogate, but also kill its operator. Bruce Willis plays an FBI agent who is investigating the series of murders, but when his own surrogate is targeted by the killers, he finds himself forced to continue the investigation in his own skin, despite all the risks.

A lot of the applications of the surrogates seem perfectly reasonable, whether it's working from home, changing your physical appearance on a whim, or going to war without human casualties, these all seem like precisely the kind of things we would eventually use robots for.

Despite the interesting backdrop, however, the movie is ultimately not so concerned with all the complex ways that this technology might change society, and what little commentary it does offer up is stale and predictable.

With the director of "U- 571" and "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" at the helm, you would think there would at least be some decent action scenes to look forward to. The truth is, the majority of the film is a high-tech murder mystery in the vein of I, Robot.

Visually the movie is a bit gaudy, but some of the effects were well executed.

Review by www.filmjunk.com.