Frank (Bruce Willis), Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren) used to be the CIA’s top agents – but the secrets they know just made them the Agency’s top targets. Now framed for assassination, they must use all of their collective cunning, experience and teamwork to stay one step ahead of their deadly pursuers and stay alive. To stop the operation, the team embarks on an impossible, cross-country mission to break into the top-secret CIA headquarters, where they will uncover one of the biggest conspiracies and cover-ups in government history.

The two star as detectives Jimmy and Paul (Willis and Morgan, respectively), decade-old partners and friends. Jimmy is of course the more competent of the two, often splitting his time between crime-fighting and babysitting his partner. Paul, on the other hand, seems more like a citizen ride-a-long with nary a cogent cop moment in the entire film. You don’t exactly need “Law and Order” believability, however, when you can have Paul interrogating suspects by way of scenes from his favorite movies. Props to Morgan for his spot-on interpretation of Denzel Washington in Training Day. As the film opens, shenanigans here and there highlight the vast differences between the two and set the stage for the larger plot — the pair pursuing a mint-condition stolen baseball card.

A portly, disheveled Sean William Scott stars as the thief of said card, Dave — an affable petty-criminal and stoner with a pension for parkour. Dave, leads Jimmy and Paul to a Mexican gang who has interests beyond just sports memorabilia. Even though their meant-to-menacing tattoos are more grade-school than gangster, the posse’s show of force is enough to imbue the film with some gravitas. Outside of these details and the charming ’80s soundtrack — seemingly a throwback to the likes of Beverly Hills Cop — the film’s plot is pretty mundane, save for a slight twist or two. To enjoy Cop Out is to simply target your attention at Willis and Morgan and exercise your right to remain silent.

If Morgan’s flavor of long-winded (and often saliva-laden) outbursts is not your thing, then you may find yourself throwing out an expletive of your own. Not everyone will enjoy a line such as, “I’ll fuck a little kid up if he kick me in the dick.” For fans of the comedian, you’ll find his shtick creeps within a hair-trigger of getting tired and repetitive, but ultimately comes off as balanced on the whole. Willis is obviously less alienating than Morgan, so you have to ask yourself if this is really your flavor of comedy. Well, is it punk?

Before you reflexively sign on because it’s Kevin Smith, know that this isn’t the classic Smith die-hard fans have come to love. It’s hard to tell if Cop Out is an evolution or offshoot of Smith’s work. The film certainly sits in the “big budget” category and is the first that the Clerks director has helmed but not written. Yet despite the new territory, Smith delivers a fun little comedy with a vulgar charm all its own. The title might have been sacrificed in favor of better business, but the film’s comedic approach and delivery doesn’t dick around.

Scientific tales that take the thinnest threads of theories and stretch them to exotic ends can be a lot of fun. The Matrix taught us our world may not be as real as we think. Terminator warns of the dangers in advancing robotic technology. And Surrogates suggests that living life by mechanical-proxy may be a better way to go. Some of these stories are thorough and game-changing, and others like Surrogates, are just skin-deep. The Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3)-directed film, however, does get a knod for supporting the idea that people truly are ugly on the inside.

As the Virtual Self Industries (VSI) sales pitch goes, why risk life and limb experiencing the dangers of daily life first-hand when you can do it through a surrogate? What those crafty marketers don’t tell you is that resigning yourself to a primarily mental existence can turn you into one of those plump space-humans from WALL-E; except in Surrogates, you’re stuck in a souped up Lazy Boy as opposed to a zippy scooter. Greer (Bruce Willis) and his wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike), are two such sedentary customers of VSI, who took to their brainy life following a family tragedy. From the comfort of their respective rooms, the two direct their surrogates through the daily grind. Maggie’s a surrogate beautician, peeling back silicon faces and setting artificial hair, while Greer is a FBI agent. At this point in the future, virtually everyone running around outside of the home is a surrogate, save for volatile bands of resistant humans known as Dreads The movie kicks into gear when it’s discovered that an operator died as a result of critical damage to its surrogate — something that has never happened — and a “skin job” is the prime suspect.

After a number of obligatory investigative sequences to move the story along, Greer catches up to the killer, who managed this ground-breaking murder with an unusual hand-held weapon. Despite the hum-drum Radio Shack appearance, the munition packs a formidable, eye-frying punch. Much of the film surrounds the pursuit of this weapon; and they are some impressive pursuits, at that. While Surrogates has a pretty empty feel overall, the film jolts to life when showing the full physical capabilities of the robotic proxies. Getting hit by cars, advancing through urban landscapes, and walking off a severed limb is all in a day for a surrogate. Greer, therefore, is at a substantial deficit when he must unplug to continue his investigation and return to the weakened motor movements of his flesh-and-blood body.

Surrogates wants the audience to reflect on the consequences to our existence when we plug in and don’t live life first-hand. A few delicate scenes between Greer and his withdrawn wife service this philosophical aim well enough, but the sentiment isn’t carried very far. More compelling is what happens to you when you adopt a life lounging behind closed curtains. Operators are veritable cave trolls, physically deteriorating with all the maladies of an addict, creating an isolated, ugly pajama population. If that’s the consequence of plugging in, then yank the chord now.

Surrogates begins with an interesting premise, but it doesn’t dig beneath the surface much. The film may have been a bit more provocative if it hadn’t disappointingly borrowed so much from iRobot. That 2004 film by Alex Proyas imagined a future where robots who started off as simple accessories to society turned on their creators. James Cromwell played the “father” of the robot population, Dr. Lanning, in that film, and in Surrogates, plays a parallel role as Canter, the creator of the surrogates program. If you’ve seen iRobot, you’ll readily identify the primary themes running through the film, making Surrogates seem almost a copy itself.