Film review: Surrogates

BY MATTHEW DAVIS

Imagine a future where people live their daily lives as they wish, without having to leave the comfort of their own house.

That is the world of Jonathan Mostow's (Terminator 3) new movie, Surrogates, and it is not too dissimilar to our own. Yet, that in part is the problem with this latest robots-run-the-world film - it lacks imagination.

While the echoes with our present day are disturbingly believable, the film is also somewhat predictable.

Based on a graphic novel, in it, most people live through robots, called surrogates, that they control directly with their minds, thereby allowing them to go about their business looking as buff, busty and bland as they like without risk or danger.

As a result, the world is apparently a safer and cleaner place, with little crime or discrimination.

However, this party at the end of progress is rudely interrupted when the son of its disillusioned inventor, Dr Lionel Canter, is murdered while inside a surrogate.

Such things are not meant to happen and it appears someone has a weapon that can bypass this important firewall.

With their entire way of living under threat, it is up to FBI agents Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) to find the killer and keep everyone's illusion alive.

But Greer's surrogate goes bung, and he is forced to venture out on to the streets as a real man.

This journey takes Greer to a group of people led by a Bob Marley lookalike, Prophet (Ving Rhames), who have rejected the surrogate lifestyle for the joys of flesh and blood.

In turn, he must track down the now AWOL Dr Canter, who seems to hold the clue to the whole kerfuffle. Of course, big business and the military are all muddled up in it too.

Willis maintains his ability to be one of the very few actors who can get away with mumbling every line. Indeed, fans of him are in for a treat, getting not one but two versions of the action hero.

As a surrogate, he is strangely tanned with a toupee, while the real-life Greer is a bit sluggish, having spent numerous years fighting crime lying on his back.

Indeed, Surrogates is quite the same, and having quickly established the back story via a flashback sequence, the film slowly plods along to its conclusion.

Undoubtedly, this ideal world does highlight contemporary anxieties surrounding personal image, and the ever-increasing manner in which we live through and with computers.

Nonetheless, when compared to similar science- fiction stories by the likes of Philip K Dick or Isaac Asimov, and their movie adaptations, Surrogates seems fairly formulaic.

Overall, the film struggles to hold your attention, and apart from the somewhat amusing robot/body pile-up near the end, the action scenes just simply tick all the boxes.

Like the surrogates themselves, the film looks good, but beneath the surface it is all rather mechanical and lifeless.

Surrogates
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Starring: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell
Time: 88 minutes
Rated: M
Trailer: Flicks.co.nz

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