Surrogates

Starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell. Directed by Jonathan Mostow. M.

Sci-fi thrillers require an open mind because half the pleasure is the imagination, intelligence and occasional parody they offer in portraying the future.

Smart, ingenious and satirical, Surrogates gets much of that right.

The other half required for success is more conventional: an engaging story with enough twists or surprises to entertain, keep disbelief suspended and come to a satisfying conclusion.

Surrogates comes up short here, more B-movie formula and fodder than fresh and gripping A-movie fare.

In the movie's unspecified future, robotic advances have led not only to the creation of synthetic humans but the capability for real people to operate them from a home control base (called stems).

After 14 years of perfecting the surrogates and their associated technology – and, one assumes, making them easily affordable – people can live life without limitations and be who they want and do what they want without risks or dangers. Surrogate sensations can be experienced with systems to prevent pain or injury to operators. It's the ultimate virtual reality for ultimate couch potatoes.

But surrogates have become so popular, people rarely go out, spending all their time sedentary at home doing their jobs and having fun through their idealised avatars. As a result, violent crime has practically disappeared, since "killing" a surrogate doesn't affect its operator – at least not until someone uses a new weapon that destroys surrogates and simultaneously fries the brains of its operators.

Trying to find the weapon and its creator are FBI agents Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) – or rather, their surrogates, with enhanced crime-fighting ability, are out on the job. Indeed, Willis gets to appear as himself as Greer and wear a blond wig as his surrogate, who, like all surrogates, has a perfect complexion and no wrinkles, and looks like the digitally enhanced characters seen in the movies Beowulf and 300.

Their investigation leads them to the man (James Cromwell) who invented surrogates and an anti-surrogate leader called the Prophet (Ving Rhames).

Surrogates – recalling Westworld, Total Recall and I Robot – is an easy-to-accept extension of today's increasingly phony world of cosmetic surgery, implants and botox in which vanity erodes identity.

It also parodies – particularly in the character of Greer's wife (Rosamund Pike) – a society gradually becoming more isolated and disconnected by the ability to stay home and alone and vicariously live life through computers and home entertainment, in the process becoming addicts to technology they believe they simply cannot live without (think cellphones). Meanwhile, on the streets and subway, the surrogates resemble zombies.

So there's much here to intrigue and spur thoughts, although some ideas – such as how surrogates could be used in warfare – are briefly presented and abandoned.

However, when it comes to the story, Surrogates sacrifices plot development for momentum, as if panicking that its inventive half might be too cerebral and consequently too confusing or boring, making it necessary to revert to routine – or even robotic – action, chases (including a car one that finally shows what happens to nearby innocent bystanders) and a ticking doomsday clock.

If the writers had had a bit more confidence and taken a bit more time – the movie clocks in at 104 minutes – in developing the story, it could have been one of the better films in its genre.

- © Fairfax NZ News