Film Review: Surrogates (Spoilers)

It’s awful. So so awful. Not really ‘Catwoman’ level awful, but it’s not far off. In a near future where we live our lives through real world robotic surrogates, where crime has been obliterated and discrimination mostly removed, a murder takes place. It’s not just any murder victim, but the son of the inventor of the surrogates technology (James Cromwell). Whodunit? The leader of the anti-surrogates human community The Prophet (Ving Rhames)? Willis’ boss on the force (Boris Kodjoe)? It takes quite a long time to get somewhere blindingly obvious. Yes, Zephrem Cochrane really is the good guy and the bad guy too. Yes he knows how to jump into any surrogate and make them do his bidding (Rhames is also a surrogate you see). It’s all very tedious and obvious. Brucie even undoes utopia for the sake of mankind. It’s very noble and heroic. Yawn yawn yawn.

It’s just not remotely interesting. Don’t get me wrong there are some fascinating issues in play. When the real world and cyberspace exist as one, what elements of human nature would persist? Would people such as Willis’ wife (Rosamund Pike)  use the technology to escape the horrors of real life such as grief? How disorientating might it be to be the only, imperfect human in a world of perfect robotic simulacrums? What would the implications be to warfare when no soldier need fight again? One lackey early on reveals the ability to tap into every surrogate’s visual feed worldwide, offering a glimmer of hope that the film might tackle the thorny, real-world issue of state surveillance and the inevitability of government abuse of power that is given to them by individuals. Sadly though screenwriters Michael Ferris and John D Brancato never take any of these threads anywhere, and leave the film as bland and lifeless as its outset.

Bruce Willis offers very little. Yipee-ki-yay in 2009? Not really – he’s wooden as a surrogate (the CGI needed to create his robotic look is annoying to put it mildly), and he’s ungainly and unsympathetic as a human, largely moping and looking anxious rather than acting. Maybe he knows he’s in a duff film and just gave up early – if so it’s a shame. He and we have been let down by director Jonathan Mostow, who had interesting makings and let them get away from him. It could have had the pacing of I, Robot, the insight of Terminator (and Mostow’s third installment in the franchise wasn’t this bad), and I’m sure Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele’s comic book source material was impressive, but noone seems to know where the focus of this film should be. It ends up being a waste of everyone’s time.

4/10

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