Film Review : Surrogates

Directed by Jonathon Mostow, Starring Bruce Willis, with Ving Rhames and James Cromwell, Screenplay John Bracanto and Michael Ferris, based on Robert Veneditti's comic series 'Surrogates'.

'Surrogates': a poor man's sci-fi. No, to be more accurate it's a poor man's Phillip K Dick, but without the paranoia, suspense, or fiendish dystopia. There's a slightly blue/grey tint to the action - so you know the future when you see it, a dash of 'Minority Report' here, a bit of 'Total Recall' there and a small measure of 'Foster, You're Dead', complete with a hold-your-hand plot tied together by the shoe-string of a vaguely interesting concept - in this case living your life through a flawless machine. No part of this idea ever feels properly explored.

The plus side; Bruce Willis does what he does best, i.e strutting around moodily whilst having marital problems. There's some joy to be found in the Hollywood warning of the dangers of superficiality (whilst Bruce is looking very good for his age). Also all the ridiculous stunts from the Borne films are suddenly plausible, though for the most part the human controlled robots go about their very boring (but now very beautiful) lives. Best of all: it has a running time of 89 minutes.

As for what's wrong; Willis' character Tom Greer isn't quite the anti-hero he could be. He's disenchanted with the idea of living through a robot; he hints at a deep ocean of melancholy concerning his dead son, and is grief stricken at the fact his wife is a shut-in, who lives through a giant barbie doll. To top it all off - he's a maverick FBI agent. But he's the everyman too. The robotic, FBI, crime-fighting everyman (although because everyone looks perfect, and is free from danger, there's no real crime). He's everything you want - he's us; but he's the bad us, but then again he's not really that moody, after all he's us, and we're basically alright, but this is a really bad day.

Unfortunately this clashing of tropes makes for a disengaging character, one who is both aloof but begs us to share his pain. The problem worsens as the 2D Tom Greer is the only character we get introduced to in any depth- in a world where image is flexible personality, alas, seems void, even for the 'meat-bag' real humans. Ving Rhames pops up occasionally as the 'Prophet' spouting revolutionary rhetoric like a rasta Tom Paine, James Cromwell gibbers in his plush mad scientist attic room, but there just isn't enough of them to make you care.

I'm sure the intention of the film was to make Bruce feel like the one lost and lonely lamb surrounded by a landscape of plastic dreams, because, as if you haven't guessed it, the theme running through the film is that when humans interact remotely they lose their humanity. It doesn't work though. The robots aren't there enough either and there's very little contrast between machine and 2D meat-bag.

Oh, there's a crime to solve too, but that's all incidental and shouldn't get in the way of the undergraduate philosophising.

In short the film's exploration of what it means to be human is flippant and shallow. It feels like the Hollywood gloss has missed the point, and there may actually have be a good point in there somewhere. Still at 89 minutes it's watchable for an Orange Wednesday. Certainly not worth full price, but it does pass the time. I also took slight pleausre at the idiots in the seats next to me who 'ooohed' and 'ahhhhed' at every, ahem, 'plot-twist'- they better not see Total Recall, lest it blow their tiny minds.