Surrogates

To the cinema to see Surrogates, the Bruce Willis sci-fi vehicle that oddly for such a high-budget film has had next to no marketing here in the UK, and a rather poor reception.

Perhaps after a poor US box office taking, the studio declared the film a flop and refused to spend money marketing it here. Which is a shame, for while it is by no means an original film, it’s a smart, stylish and interesting action flick with little in the way of depth but solid momentum, a good whodunit I failed to see right through and an interesting moral choice for the protagonist at the end. It portrays a near-future society where almost all of humanity uses a ‘surrogate’, or robotic avatar, to travel the real world, living out fantasies of beauty and decadence from the safety of remote control. But when someone kills the son of the ‘father of surrogates’ via his machine, a police chief begins to unravel a net of intrigue that could endanger everyone who uses such a machine.

I thought that sort of idea was original and clever in 2001, or whenever it was I thought about putting it into a book, as I’ve mentioned every time a similar concept comes along, but as you might be able to tell from how I phrased that, in a world where there Second Life can lead to a divorce and where people die playing World of Warcraft for too long, it’s become somewhat overdone. If this film had been adapted more quickly from its 2005 comic book source, perhaps it would have seemed more original, but has reached the realms of somewhat passé now. Still, what is important in this sort of case is the execution rather than the real strength of the concept, and the film does it quite well. With makeup, the surrogates are made to look not quite real, and there’s something fun about seeing real actors purposely put in the ‘uncanny valley’. Willis’ character is somewhat wooden but likeable (and kept reminding me of Jordan Rudess), and the central antagonist, in all his forms, is rather an interesting man.

The problems really are with the lack of depth. We see how this surrogate thing works in cities in America, but if 98% of the population are using them, what about rural communities and the Third World? How are they paid for? Why isn’t there crime for surrogates or more piracy and bizarre modifications? If they are used in the military, why aren’t they made better than human, to a far greater extent than is shown? Crime is supposedly down 99%, but wouldn’t people end up being more careless about property and take greater risks? I just found that not enough of the questions the film raised got answered. The ending was also somewhat contrived and the skimpy backgrounds that the characters were given seemed like they were made for a creative writing class.

Overall, not a bad film at all, but hardly one that will be remembered as a classic.