Director: Jonathan Mostow
Stars: Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Radha Mitchell, James Cromwell
In the future, no one ever leaves their home. It's unnecessary, because almost every human being has a "surrogate"; a lifelike robot that you can not only control, but with which you can experience all five senses. Sounds a bit like Avatar, yes? True that; and several other sci-fi stories from the last century, including The Matrix. The difference between this movie and those is that the focus here is entirely on the sociological implications of what it's like for the population of the world to interact with each other entirely through a filter.
If you can't feel that hammering sensation on your head, I'll explain the metaphor; the surrogates are us, diddling our lives away on the information superhighway with blogs (Cough!), social networks and World Of Warcraft. Something that started out as a useful tool has become the central instrument in our lives, and I can see the television sets starting to gave the laptops jealous glances.
The plot revolves around a pair of detectives who are investigating the death of someone who was seemingly killed while using his surrogate, via an electrical signal sent through the surrogate and back to the host body. Until this point, death via surrogate seemed impossible, so the police force and government are doing their best to keep it under wraps. After all, to do away with their most prominent form of transportation would mean a major shift in social structure. Somehow, having robots avatars has cured venereal disease (Makes sense) and racism (Highly questionable, but whatever). Meanwhile, one of the lead detectives (Bruce Willis) is having his own doubts about the surrogate program, having not seen his wife in the flesh in quite some time.
Using a detective story in a world building sci-fi universe has it's plusses and minuses. It's an easy shorthand for the audience, being familiar with the genre, and also an easy shorthand to the action. On the downside, it leads to a lot of plot twists in a story that is already having to dump a lot of info in your lap, since as an audience member you're a stranger in a strange land. Blade Runner did this correctly; keep it simple. Real simple. I'm not saying that Surrogates is difficult to follow, but the twists are taking up time that should either be exciting or philosophical.
Mostow is in Terminator 3 mode here, with fairly blocky direction and ugly lighting. Why have you fallen so far from Breakdown, Jonathan? Your hue is red, not blue. Stay out of the future. It makes better use of humor than Terminator 3 did; fluid to the story, and not overbearing. The action is pretty well done, even if the robots distractingly float like characters from a wuxia film.
It's far from mind blowing, but I found the film to be a fun diversion. Be warned; according to most reviews, I'm in the minority on this. The film is pretty much reviled.
Frederick Opines: MIDDLING
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