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Movie:		4.0
Picture:		8.0
Sound:		8.0
Extras:		6.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Jonathan Mostow
Writer(s):	Michael Ferris & John D. Brancato
Starring:	Bruce Willis • James Cromwell • Radha Mitchell • Rosamund Pike • Ving Rhames
Genre:	Action • Sci-Fi
Website:	http://www.chooseyoursurrogate.com/
Release Date:	January 26, 2010
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $25.99
Amazon:

One year, three wide release films about living by proxy. Gamer and Surrogates may have gotten there first, but I think we can all agree Avatar has left them both as distant memories of 2009’s cinematic past. Luckily, or unluckily, cinematic pasts can be relived via DVD and Blu-ray. Surrogates, like its counterparts, imagines a world where humanity no longer requires a direct interface with the world, now we can strap into a machine and have robotic versions of ourselves live out our lives. Surrogates succeeds as a fun exercise in “what if?” science fiction, but as a piece of entertainment it’s disappointingly stale in its storytelling. For all its special effects wizardry, a minefield of plotholes and expository nonsense hinders its progress at every turn.

Just like in Gamer, Surrogates circles around the brainchild invention of a tech-guru (James Cromwell), which pioneers a new way of living: Surrogacy. By living their lives through the eyes of robots, all of the world’s troubles seem to fall away. War, violence, murder – it all fades into a statistical memory, with any remaining hints of the crimes snuffed out by a Minority Report-esque ability to stop crimes before they happen (by using the video output of surrogates everywhere). But would this work? Wouldn’t this make suicide bombing the most efficient process in the world? With everyone sitting at home in their apartments, strapped to a machine, bombing an apartment complex would not only be effective, but by using a surrogate to walk into the building and set off the bomb you’re essentially eliminating any reluctance to commit the heinous crime. Surrogates’s proposal, even one made purely to help drive the film’s plot, never really makes sense.

The story gets rolling when that basic proposal of safer living by surrogacy is challenged by a new weapon which can kill people when it’s used on their surrogate. The first murder just happens to be the son of Older Canter (Cromwell), who had taken a surrogate of his father’s out for a joyride. Officers Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) take on the assignment to discover how such a life-death connection could exist between a person and their surrogate, a connection whose non-existence is the most important element to the success of the surrogate industry. In pursuing the case, Greer’s own surrogate is damaged leaving him to solve the rest of the case in the flesh, a situation which only adds to Greer’s growing resentment of the sterile lifestyle surrogacy creates. Greer’s take on surrogacy puts him at odds with his wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike), who has steeped herself in the distant life of surrogacy to help her forget the pain of the child they lost in a car accident. The case takes a few turns here and there, with a man known as The Prophet (Ving Rhames) at the center of an anti-surrogate movement; with Canter pushing them further every few scenes.

The overall synthesis of Surrogates is somewhat unique, but for the entire duration you can’t help but feel like you’re watching a new version of I, Robot with a twist. Elements of the film are borrowed from numerous sources; there’s a scene of people inducing ecstasy in their surrogates through surges of electricity, a la the “jacking on” fascination of Futurama. If you can’t make more than a few connections to the work of Isaac Asimov or Phillip K. Dick, then you’re just not trying. Ultimately, Surrogates is the sum of a great many parts, but it’s never better than any one of them. However, it’s still a good sci-fi flick for a Saturday afternoon.

Visually the film has a very eye-candy aesthetic. There are many neon hues flashing about and the very polished futuristic look gives the whole film a very sterile feel, which doesn’t help the viewer forget how the plot fails to create a believable premise for its story.

Blu-ray Bonus Features

A decent audio commentary, a selection of deleted scenes and a music video for Breaking Benjamin’s “I Will Not Bow” comprise the lesser features on the disc. The featurettes worth a look include a piece about transferring Surrogates from the pages of its graphic novel to film and another attempting to explain the science and logic of surrogacy. It never quite answers the loopholes of the plot device, but it at least shows they were thinking about how it didn’t always make the most sense.