Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Film review: ‘Surrogates’

The first thing you notice about Bruce Willis as FBI Agent Tom Greer in the opening sequence of the sci-fi thriller “Surrogates” is how good he looks these days.

In fact, the grizzled “Die Hard” warrior is looking downright fresh. And it’s not just the golden toupee; he also looks 20 pounds lighter and years younger, his face smooth and unlined.

The guy is positively glowing.

Just as you start to wonder if he’s found some secret fountain of youth, the rabbit leaps out of the hat and we see another Bruce — the bald, craggy, world-weary version — staggering stiffly out of a bedroom like he’s got arthritis in every bone and is about to keel over and gasp his last breath.

What’s the deal? The first Bruce was a “surrogate” — an idealized, virtually perfect robotic avatar remotely controlled by the real Bruce from a chair in his home, using only his mind.

Yes, we’re in “replicant” territory, with director Jonathan Mostow and writers Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato seeking to give a post-modern tweak to themes explored by Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic “Blade Runner” — like what it means to be human.

Except now the scenario doesn’t feel so far-out. “Surrogates” riffs on real robotics research in which electrodes implanted in certain areas of the brain can power robotic limbs solely through the user’s thoughts — providing new hope for amputees and paralysis victims.

From there, it doesn’t seem like a huge leap to the idea of full-body robots that can be wirelessly controlled from afar.

A fast-paced series of prologue scenes sets the stage. Renowned scientist Dr. Lionel Canter (James Cromwell) invented the surrogates 14 years before, but was forced out of the company he founded and is now a recluse.

Flash to the film’s present day, when seemingly 98 percent of the population has plugged in and dropped out. Racism, violent crime, discrimination and all the other ills of society have fallen away, and everyone stays young and gorgeous forever.

And since surrogates have full tactile function, their human operators — “meatbags” — can stay put in their “stim chairs” and live a never-ending fantasy. Indeed, the ads for the company that makes surrogates promise “life ... only better.”

Of course, there are always malcontents. Here, that’s the “Dreds,” humans who view surrogacy as an abomination. Self-segregated in small surrogate-free zones and eking out a threadbare existence, they follow a charismatic leader called the Prophet (Ving Rhames).

(And it’s no coincidence that almost all are lumpy and unattractive, to play up the contrast with the surrogates.)

The story kicks in when two surrogates are “killed.” That’s bad enough, but the weapon used sent a surge back to the human operators and liquefied their brains — supposedly impossible with the redundant fail-safes built into the technology. Do I even need to mention that the Defense Department is involved?

Greer and his FBI partner, Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell), draw the case, which quickly hits a series of hairpin turns that eventually deprive Greer of his surrogate and force him to re-enter the real world as a plain ol’ meatbag.

The plot has a few large inconsistencies that can’t be described without giving too much away. Mostow apparently recognized this, because the film is almost all story, driving in an unbroken arc over a period of just a few days.

But what scant character development exists is effective, focusing on how Greer and his wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike), a total slave to the surrogate lifestyle, have chosen to deal with — or, more precisely, not deal with — the loss of their son years before in a car crash.

The film deftly captures the tenor of our age, when virtual reality is becoming the preferred environment for many people who spend large chunks of their waking hours glued to iPods, cell phones, BlackBerrys and laptops, oblivious to the real world (a true thrill when I’m sharing the highway with them).