John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

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 John Allman

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Surrogates

Posted Feb 7, 2010 by John Allman

Updated Feb 7, 2010 at 04:54 PM

Surrogates
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Directed by: Jonathan Mostow
Run time: 88 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: In 1968, author Philip K. Dick asked the question: Do androids dream of electric sheep?

That book spawned one of science fiction’s greatest cinematic visions, “Blade Runner,” which took the position that synthetic life forms might want nothing more than to be human.

If you consider many of the sci-fi films since Ridley Scott’s opus first drew rave reviews as a modern-day classic, the question of who dreams what has been spun on its ear. These days, it’s not the robots who want to be human so much as the humans who dream of living life unencumbered by moral choices or consequences, ie becoming a robot.

Recent movies like “Avatar” and “The Matrix” have shown the freedom that can come from living a virtual life.

“Surrogates,” the latest Bruce Willis-starring vehicle, imagines a world where most people no longer leave their homes. Instead, they plug in and experience life vicariously through a ‘surrogate,’ an artificial synthetic humanoid through whose eyes and cerebral cortex the human host feels joy and pleasure, but not pain. At the end of each day, the surrogate comes home, plugs into a charging port and its human wakes up and moves about his or her house.

As the movie begins, someone has found a loophole to inflict pain on both a surrogate body and its human host by burning out the eyes and turning the human brain to liquid jello.

The first surrogate-human host murder comes at a time of great resistance. Most of the planet has retreated indoors and bought into the surrogate life. It’s a booming business. But small factions of rebels have gathered together and created sovereign colonies where surrogates aren’t allowed; and they have rallied around a leader known as The Prophet. The creator of the surrogate technology, Older Cantor (James Cromwell), has gone into seclusion. And even law enforcement is now populated almost entirely by surrogate officers instead of real people.

Willis’ character, Tom Greer, appears in two forms. His surrogate has a laughable hairpiece and is capable of surprising strength and agility. His human body looks more like Willis today, aged and bald. Greer’s wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike) has embraced the future and seems unhappy when unhooked from the machine that allows her to experience life through a surrogate. Tom and Maggie harbor resentment and remorse from the death of a child. They barely connect in their human forms.

With all these issues at play, you might wonder how director Jonathan Mostow finds the time to fully explore so many big ticket ideas. He doesn’t. Much of “Surrogates” plays like a fairly routine sci-fi action flick – “The 6th Day” mashed up with “Johnny Mnemonic.”

There’s little discussion about the ethical choices that come with living life vicariously through an autobot. There’s no discussion about the impact that such a decision might have on families, both the married parents and the kids, none of whom would ever truly interact in a meaningful way.
The big mystery about why someone wants to kill a surrogate’s owner by killing the surrogate gets lost in a bunch of hooey about man taking responsibility for his own creations, yadda yadda yadda.

Those types of philosophical debates are what added resonance to movies like “Blade Runner” and “I, Robot.” The exploration of conflict between the human and the synthetic is key to making meaningful science fiction. Even a movie like “A.I.” Spielberg’s flawed attempt to weigh in on the discourse, still had enough foresight to consider the ramifications when flesh and fantasy collide.

And minus the one big action scene about 20 minutes into the movie, “Surrogates” is a lifeless affair, bogged down by kind-of cool visuals, neo-noirish dialogue and an aching want to be so much more than it is.

Plus, Ving Rhames gets the award for worst fake dreadlocks ever put to film.

Is it a total waste? No, absolutely not. It’s entertaining enough, much like other, lesser films already mentioned (cough cough, The 6th Day, cough cough), but it’s not a movie that’s going to “Wow” you.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Yes.
Nudity – No.
Gore – No.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Synthetics or man, you decide.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – Audio commentary, “A More Perfect You: The Science of Surrogates” featurette, deleted scenes, music video, “Breaking the Frame: A Graphic Novel Comes to Life” featurette.
On the Web – http://www.chooseyoursurrogate.com/
Release Date – Jan. 26, 2010