SURROGATES by Jonathan Mostow
2056. A world where everybody is young, good-looking, healthy and powerful. No discrimination because of skin color, gender or looks. That’s the world of FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis), his wife Maggie (Rosamunde Pike) and his partner Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell). 98 percent of the world population lives in this seemingly perfect world, where injuries or fatal accidents are merely property damage, because all those people live their lives through remote controlled robots, so-called “surrogates”, while staying in the safety of their homes. The remaining two percent live in reservations, their leader is the “Prophet” (Ving Rhames) who preaches against surrogates and the unnatural, artificial lifestyle they bring about.
When a new kind of weapon appears that kills people when it is used against their surrogates, Tom must leave his comfortable home and investigate in person.
A grand vision, superstar Bruce Willis, a story that calls for action and suspense, the promise of relevance and darkness – could this be a new Blade Runner? It seems so. And it might have been in another – perfect – world.
But unfortunately, Mostow stays strictly at the surface of things and keeps it as polished and shallow as his “surrogates”. Lacking any detail or critical thoughts about this world (How could all those people afford to buy surrogates? What are the ethical, philosophical and social implications and consequences? What about hackers?) as well as those big action scenes you might expect, Surrogates is just that – the surrogate for the much better movie it should have been.
Why three and a half stars, then? One star is strictly for what might have been.
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