All I can say is at least it is only 88 minutes long, because Surrogates is a film promising a high tech concept only to offer up a story so dumb the plot holes are evident from the opening moments and get worse and worse as the film goes on. Is there a possibility for this world to ever exist? I’m not sure if you are a pessimist or an optimist if you think it can, but I’m sitting here laughing at the balls it takes to even suggest it could… at least at the level presented here.
After an opening montage introducing the audience to a future in which humans no longer walk the Earth and have decided it’s best to stay at home in a Lazy Boy plugged into their prettier robotic surrogate, we are witness to a crime in which a special lightning bolt flashlight gun is used to scorch a surrogate’s brain and as a result fry the brain of its operator. Considering the murdered human happens to be the son of the surrogate founder it appears this is more than just a random crime and the killer must be caught in order for this artificial utopia to live on.
Ironically enough this comes after we are told crime rates are at an all-time low as one guy has been assigned to watch over the surrogates and make sure they don’t do anything bad. Let me say that one more time… One guy is the final wall of security in a world where we are led to believe everyone is plugged into these things. Everyone! A situation that apparently makes you a surrogate user or a lunatic living on made up reservations where the FBI doesn’t even have jurisdiction.
Dedication to these “surries,” as they’re referred to, is so high humans now refer to themselves as “meat bags.” Perhaps this is the world we are headed to, and in that case I would certainly have to say it’s a pessimistic way to look at things, but still not a realistic or logical one.
Setting out to solve the crime of the murdered son is Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell), two FBI agents with what appears to be special surrogate powers such as running and jumping as if they are equipped with G.I. Joe accelerator suits. Lines are crossed, back-stabbing occurs and not everyone is who they appear to be. It’s a film invested in eye-roll moments and there are several to satisfy director Jonathan Mostow’s dedication.
Serving as his first theatrical film since 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Mostow has done himself no favors with Surrogates. The idea behind this film could best be described as a cross between The Matrix and I, Robot, but the execution doesn’t even begin to live up to either comparison. And I would hate to be James Cameron right about now as the inevitable comparisons to Avatar are sure to be made, but even Cameron wasn’t dumb enough to propose an entire species would decide to jack themselves into artificial beings at once, because, you know, that’s stupid.
As a result of the turmoil and destruction seen in Surrogates if you think the economic woes we are faced with right now are a big deal they would be nothing compared to the global economic collapse that would come as a result of Surrogates. It’s impossible to predict what screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Brancato expected us to take from this and I have never read the Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele graphic novel of which their screenplay was based, but if it’s anything like what is presented here I can only assume no one read the script before deciding on the film’s budget and giving it the green.
