DVD Reviews

Surrogates – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Jan 25, 2010, 14:16 GMT

How do you save humanity when the only thing that\'s real is you? From the director of TERMINATOR 3 comes a jaw-dropping psychological thriller starring the ultimate action hero, Bruce Willis. In the not-so-distant future, where people experience life through perfect surrogates controlled from the safety of their own homes, murder is a thing of the past. But when a college student linked to the creator of these replicants is ...more

Surrogates is a slick, fast and entirely plausible sci-fi allegory about what could be in store for us. Director Jonathan Mostow gives us a near-future where everybody is plugged into ‘surrogates’, perfected robot versions of themselves that they send out into the real world. But this perfect façade is about to show a few cracks…

Based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldel and adapted by Mostow’s frequent collaborators John Brancato and Michael Ferris (‘Terminator 3’), Mostow directs his first film in six years and shows he hasn’t lost his touch for a great chase sequence (the underrated ‘Breakdown’ being Mostow’s first film) with Bruce Willis returning to leading-man sci-fi after 98’s ‘The Fifth Element’. 

‘Surrogates’ underperformed this past Fall no doubt due to a expensive ad campaign that painted this film as little more than a ‘I, Robot’ knock-off.  While there are indeed superficial similarities, ‘Surrogates’ has more on its mind than just bloated action. It presents a future where we can all decide to live our life virtually and that 98% of the population has chosen to do so.

Idealized, young, attractive surrogates fill the streets with most mirroring the younger versions of their controllers tucked safely back at home in ‘stim chairs,’ but some are little more than crude avatars (i.e. an obese man controlling a young hottie, an idea also posed by the recent ‘Gamer’).

This anxiety and social dependence on technology is what powers the film and when our current society is dominated by such virtual social networks like ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’, it’s hard to argue that if the technology presents itself, we’ll only be too happy to shrink back to our houses and live out our lives as a facsimile. 

The opening montage shows how we arrive at this world in just seven years (the film takes place in 2017 which is admittedly a bit bullish) and that all violent crime has all but disappeared as no one is in any real physical danger.

A small percentage of the population refuses to hand themselves over to the technology so they become unkempt rebels delegated to junk pile reservations led by the bearded Prophet (Ving Rhames) who constantly speaks out against the use of surrogates. 

But it’s mostly a utopia where everybody is beautiful and no real danger is posed. But this paradise can’t last. When two people are killed through their surrogates (something that shouldn’t be able to happen), two FBI agents Thomas Greer (Willis) and Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) are sent to investigate. The cops discover that a rebel has created a weapon that can kill people that are seemingly safe at home in their stim chairs by destroying their surrogates. 

Great, subtle effects show off Willis’ surrogate who looks around 35-years old with all wrinkles smoothed over and wearing a blonde toupee. The filmmakers, special effect crew and actors do a great job presenting these surrogates as uncannily life-like but not quite human – a marginal plastic appearance and slightly stilted motions give them away.

And when Willis as Greer loses his surrogate in a frenzied chase sequence, the real Greer must negotiate the streets of Boston as the Willis we all know and love know, aged with a shaved head and rugged facial hair. 

Falling further down the rabbit hole, Greer’s investigation leads him to a confrontation with the Prophet and a search for the inventor of the surrogates, Dr. Canter (James Cromwell) - an elusive figure that was forced out of the company that markets and distributes the surrogates. Is the father of the surrogates angry at his children? 

I guess my main complaint would be that the film moves a bit too fast, at a scant 85 minutes, Mostow presents an engaging world that comes across as a bit slight. There’s a lot that’s effectively packed in to be sure but letting some of these characters breath a bit wouldn’t have been a bad thing.

The surrogates themselves are expertly conceived but other effects, the motion of the surrogates in the action scenes for example, needed a little bit more work. All that aside, this is smart sci-fi well worth checking out. 

The film is presented with a 1080p 2.40:1 AVC encode that’s befitting an 80 million f/x-heavy actioner with strong color and detail and no grain or artifacts that I could spot. The same goes for the English DTS-HD Master Aud track with great use of the surrounds. 

Special Features start off with an aud commentary from Jonathan Mostow that’s simply okay – a mostly straight account of different aspects of the film.

We also get two featurettes, a fifteen making of ‘A More Perfect You’ with the standard cast and crew interviews and a seven minute ‘Breaking The Frame: A Graphic Novel Comes To Life’, which interviews the creators of the graphic novel and how it came about.

Some Deleted Scenes and a Music Video for ‘I Will Not Bow’ round out the somewhat underwhelming special features. Where’s all the cool Blu-ray picture-in-picture stuff? 

Special Features are a bit light but the vid and aud is good and for the film itself. Surrogates is no ‘Blade Runner,’ but it deserves more than its mostly already forgotten status as an ‘I, Robot’, ahem, clone.

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