Throughout his career Jonathan Mostow has never made a poor film. Surrogates is certainly not one of his better films like U-571 but it is a fun and enjoyable movie. The film revolves around an idea similar to Gamer but now the convicts are robots and we aren’t in a video game. As established in the opening titles, Over the last 14 years robots have become a part of our daily lives. People do not leave their homes anymore; instead they do everything through robotic humanoids called Surrogates. These Surrogates can be made to look like anything the “operator” chooses, even going as far as making a man into a women or a white person black. Because of these Surrogates there is virtually no murder, assault, rape, accidents, etc… This is why law enforcement is stunned when they discover that two operators were killed while connected to their Surrogates. The rest of the movie continues from that point.
One thing that Mostow did really well is show the audience what would happen if we could look exactly like we imagine we could. Whenever a Surrogate is on screen they look very glossy and polished, however regular humans look a little dirty and essentially fragile. These Surrogates are shown to have infected everything including the military. Now war is fought from a chair and when a soldier is “killed” they are given a new surrogate and get right back into battle. What is interesting about the military’s Surrogate use versus that of everyone else is that soldiers are still fit. They don’t let themselves go — physically that is. They still work out, as if they always have the idea in the back of their heads that they will have to fight for themselves one day. It is too bad that this isn’t explored more. I am rather assuming this point since you never actually see any soldier who has poor fitness.
Of course one big benefit that Surrogates has is the always likable Bruce Willis. Willis, like every actor in this film, essentially plays two different roles — his surrogate and himself. When Willis is playing his Surrogate he talks and moves very jittery and robotic. Nothing about his Surrogate his fluid — like Willis is trying to resist it. So when Willis’s character is forced to break away from the Surrogate world and walk out into society as himself, He begins to move “normally” again. Willis is definitely the easiest character to relate to in the film but he is also very underdeveloped. I won’t give away his character’s back story (of which there is little) but I just wish there was more. Perhaps if they actually showed it instead of just mentioning it on the side it would have been a bit more believable.
There isn’t much to say for the story. It is filled with holes you could drive a truck through and many underdeveloped side characters and things that these characters do that are never explained. For example, in the third act a group of Surrogates are seen shocking themselves. Based on a comment Willis makes, the audience is led to believe that what they are doing is a Surrogate version of drug use, but it is never explained so it becomes a mere after thought. Perhaps the weakest part of the film is the most important part of it: the human resistance. In every major city in the Surrogate world there is a section of people who choose to live their lives not just without Surrogates, but most modern technology. Unfortunately, they have very little screen time and are never explored as deeply as they could be.
Surrogates is a perfect example of a film that was noted to death. Its run time is a dismal 89 minutes. Not much story can be told in this amount of time. If the film was maybe just 30 minutes longer there could have been a much better story to tell. Everything could have been explained better and there would have been a lot less gaps in the logic.
Surrogates is a fun movie. It isn’t great, it isn’t smart and it isn’t smooth, but Mostow has delivered an interesting attempt to look at a possible future. If you’re looking to kill and hour and a half, Surrogates is worth a matinee viewing. Other than that, most of the audience can wait till the film hits DVD.
6 out of 10