Blu ray movie review of Surrogates

As a science fiction film, Surrogates is a movie we are very familiar with. The cautionary tale of over dependence on technology and all the morality issues that goes with new technology has been explored in many previous movies. Movies like Blade Runner, Gamer, and Artificial Intelligence: AI has all explored this theme. With evolution of technology, some of these morality issues that we must deal with are getting closer to reality. This movie does nothing set itself apart from the earlier science fiction movies with similar ideas. This isn’t to say the movie is boring or lacking in any originality.

The movie opens up with destruction of two surrogate robots. Normally, this would not be a problem except that their controllers are dead as well. With the invention of surrogates, people interact and work through their surrogate robots from comfort of their home. This virtually eliminates all crimes and disease. The death of two surrogates and their controlling human counterpart brings about the investigation from FBI. The people that oppose the surrogate life style are the primary suspect. There are some twist and turns. But, it’s fairly straight forward plot with some decent action mixed in.

The movie is entertaining most of the time. The fact that overall story has been told in other movies is not that big of deal. The problem I had with the movie was the lack of “ooohs” and “aahhs” you are supposed to get from science fiction movie. Blade Runner and other good science fiction films usually deliver some very good wow factors that Surrogates lacked. I felt like I was watching a movie of the week on Syfy channel. The overall cast was ok. It would have been cool to see different actors play the surrogate instead of the younger and better looking versions of themselves. Otherwise, it is passable film and decent way to spend 90 minutes.

What do you think about this movie? Please leave your thoughts below.

Blu ray movie review of The Hurt Locker

I’ve always enjoyed Kathryn Bigelow’s movies including the not so great K-19: The Widowmaker. She has great sense for action movies and it shows in her films. The Hurt Locker is no exception. She takes a very sensitive subject in Iraq war and makes a non political film. This is particularly refreshing as the liberal Hollywood tends to have very strong anti war messages in most of the war films. Instead, Kathryn Bigelow focuses on the character and the job he is entrusted to carry out. There is no political message on why we invaded Iraq or whether it was right or wrong.

The story is about soldiers who have to disarm bombs. This military job is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Imagine walking toward the bomb when everyone else is running away from it. On a job to disarm a roadside bomb, the soldier assign to disarm it dies when the bomb goes off. Sergeant James is brought in as replacement. James has reputation for being reckless and wild. His approach is not appreciated by his subordinates at the beginning. The two subordinates think James is borderline suicidal. They go from one incident to another and face some incredibly dangerous situations.

Unlike some other movies, there is no one true evil villain in this movie. The movie portrays the dangerous job and the men who undertake the job. It’s part character study and part action movie. At the end of the movie, we don’t get the satisfaction of watching a cruel villain die or captured. Instead, we see the heroic efforts of our soldiers doing their best to survive and complete their jobs. While this might sound boring, the movie is anything but boring. The scenes are packed with suspense and action. There is not a single boring minute in the movie. I can honestly say this is one of the best war film I’ve ever watched in my life.

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Blu ray movie review of Gamer

The overall premise of Gamer is similar to Death Race or Japanese classic Battle Royale. Gamer is not the first movie to deal with “prisoner sport“ genre. You can even trace the idea back to The Running Man starting the current California governor. While the overall concept is nothing new, Gamer does manage to add little twist. In Gamer, the prisoner/combatants are controlled by other humans who control them like video game. This little twist does little to update the overall plot or story line from the Running Man or other similar movies.

Like The Running Man, the protagonist is wrongly accused and convicted. Kable, played by Gerald Butler, is wrongly accused of killing his friend. Sent to jail, he has little choice but to participate in a real life combat sport called Slayer. In Slayer, each combatant is controlled by other human via an interface implanted on the combatants. Once they reach certain number of games, they are released from the prison. However, none has managed to survive the game.

The plot is rather simple and predictable. You have the evil guy who put Kable into the prison for his purpose. And, you can tell that Kable will eventually get out and kill this evil guy. There’s nothing surprising about the plot. The action sequences are pretty good as expected from a polished Hollywood production. You can tell that the movie is geared toward the gaming generation who like to play the first person shooter games like Doom or Modern Warfare. While it’s not as bad as some video game movies, Gamer doesn’t stand out particularly well as a thriller or even action movie. It’s 100 minutes of mindless diversion at best.

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Blu ray movie review of A Perfect Getaway

A perfect Getaway is an imperfect thriller movie. It is classic whodunit movie that keeps you guessing between two main suspects. The trailers and teasers for the movie did a good job of hiding the twist and keeping the audience in the dark until that “aha!” moment in the movie. The director, David Twohy, almost pulls off an outstanding movie. The only shortfall comes from the inconsistent way the characters interact and act with each other that make no sense in the end.

The movie starts with a wedding video and moves forward to the honeymoon. Cliff and Cydney are about to go on a hiking trip in Hawaii for their honeymoon. While on the island, they get the news homicide on the other island. The primary suspects for the murder are a man and a woman. On their drive to the hiking trail, they almost pick up hitchhikers who are headed the same way. They get little scared and eventually drive off without them. Once they get to the hiking trailer, they meet up with another hiking couple and proceed to hike with them to the destination.

This is the very basic plot without giving away the twist or the suspense. We are left to guess who the real killers are. The director does good job hiding the twist until the very end. However, there are very inconsistent dialogues that have no place in the film. The real killers talk as if they have no clue who the real killers are when they have private conversation. This is mystifying as the killers themselves would not have this conversation in private. Director could have done better job structuring the movie around this twist like M. Night Shyamalan did in The Sixth Sense. In The Sixth Sense, we go back and watch the previous scenes to figure out if there was any clue to the twist. We get subtle hints but nothing that contradicts the twist. A Perfect Getaway fails to achieve this. If you can overlook this inconsistency, the movie is very watchable.

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