Surrogates has a great premise, but fails to remain entertaining.
Artwork by Rebecca Holt
Ever wish life were like a video game? One could do what they want when they want, and never worry about disease, death, or despair. Surrogates, aims to make life just like that, as everyone lives through surrogate robots controlled by a human operator.
While the humans sit comfortably in their operating chairs, their robots are out working, interacting with each other, and “living” life. Well, at least in this movie the machines don’t turn on humanity. Finally, there’s a little originality in this stinking cesspool of robotic clichés and sequels.
In this futuristic world, humans sit in recliners hooked up to their bodies while robots get to run around and play house. It’s the ideal situation for your everyday consumer; why put yourself in danger or risk getting sick if you really don’t have to? Plus, if you get “killed” you just wait for a new surrogate.
This perfect society, supposedly free from crime, infection, and hostility is, predictably, not about to remain so perfect. Hey, it’s a movie.
FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis, What Just Happened) seems to be out of a job, until he and his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell, Thick as Thieves) are called in to investigate the first actual murder in years. The surrogates of a man and his lady friend are found outside of a nightclub, with mechanical eyes and brains completely fried. Soon the agents discover the male surrogate is registered to Dr. Lionel Canter, the famed inventor of these walking contraptions. Yet it is not the good doctor who kicked the bucket, but instead his son borrowing one of his father’s machines.
While daddy scientist is upset, the FBI decides to look for the guy with the special gun that can kill someone while they’re still in their surrogates. They determine that this guy is a Dread, one of the normal humans who rejected surrogates and live in small encampments away from the robo-men. The agents track the guy down, chase him into a human reservation (which, by the way, remind me very much of the deep south and redneck hillbillies). In the chase, and resulting fight, Greer narrowly escapes the same fate as the good doctor’s son. However, as the crazy humans close in, Greer is forced to continue his work in person as his surrogate takes a shotgun blast to the face.
In his classic renegade style, Willis goes against orders to stay in bed and forget the case, and keeps after the man with a ray gun. But the mysterious man is dead, and the leader of the human resistance groups, known as the Prophet (ooh scary!) shows up at the funeral. Coincidence? I think not. Fearing that the human leader will now have a weapon capable of killing surrogates and their owners, Greer attempts to infiltrate the human settlement. However, he is “gently” persuaded to leave the reservation via the fists of the Prophet’s cronies, and Greer decides to see if the military knows anything about the super secret surrogate gun.
If I were to sum the movie up in one word, it would be “Meh.” I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t particularly like it either. It was the definition of mediocrity, and I thought it could have been much better. The idea itself is solid; I would have loved to see more scenes with the robot military, but it really wasn’t anything special. The storyline became complicated and cluttered, but the underlying moral was that people really aren’t living life when they live it through robots. I expected a lot more action (it is a Bruce Willis movie after all). The suspense of the movie was drawn out too much, and the plot twists and turns were not shocking, nor predictable, but utterly boring.
Is this movie worth seeing? Perhaps. However, I can think of many better ways to spend ten bucks and much better robot movies, like I, Robot, Blade Runner, Terminator, and Wall-E. In fact, the epic robo-sock-puppets of 9 were better than this!
★★☆☆☆
