Troubling news from the future: we'll perfect robotics, but still be unable to master a decent toupee.
And isn't that just Bruce Willis' luck?
For half of Surrogates he resembles John McClane, while the rest of the time he looks like Uter, the foreign-exchange student on The Simpsons.
Let me explain: in the world of this science-fiction cautionary tale, based on the graphic novel, humanity has evolved into a society of shut-ins content to interact via android avatars which are all leaner, hornier and younger than their flesh-and-blood "operators."
Thus we are treated to both Old Willis and Young Willis. (Regrettably, we searched and searched, but couldn't find Good Movie Willis.)
You needn't be a philosophy major to recognize the parallels between this extrapolated future on-screen and the modern-day virtual vistas of such ignore-the-life-you-have phenomenons as Second Life.
Or to remember that the Gerard Butler vehicle Gamer tread on similar themes just a few weeks ago. In that dud, mind-control advances allowed nerds to puppeteer death-row convicts and hookers for showdowns of violence and sex.
Surrogates -- much closer in tone and quality to I, Robot -- is nowhere as seedy or unsavoury, but it nonetheless aims to exploit our own concerns about how technology is isolating us from human interconnectivity. Too bad the metaphor, visuals and mystery never quite, well, connect, into a captivating whole.
It isn't a terrible film, but it is witless, derivative and, for a movie billed as an action thriller, lacking in such crucial elements as action and thrills.
Willis stars as FBI agent Thomas Greer, himself a surrogate user estranged from his wife (Rosamund Pike) and still mourning his dead son.
At this point, a Hollywood cinematic hero requires only three items: a gun, a grudge and a dead child. Oh, and a murder to investigate. In Greer's case it's the killing of a surrogate.
What's troubling about this homicide in particular is that not only was the mechanical duplicate destroyed, but the human user perished too. Until now, it was believed that, even if a surrogate was destroyed, fail-safes ensured no harm could come to its operator.
The investigation eventually leads Greer and his comely partner (Radha Mitchell) to a conspiracy involving a scientist (James Cromwell) and the radical leader of the "human coalition" (Ving Rhames) who wants to abolish surrogacy altogether.
Matters are complicated further when Greer's surrogate is obliterated, forcing him, for the first time in years, to venture outside.
For Willis, the appeal is obvious: he gets to play dual characters -- both his middle-aged grizzled self and a younger incarnation. Problematically, though, the surrogate doesn't so much as look like Willis circa 1988's Die Hard as much as it does present-day Willis, airbrushed for a magazine cover.
And while I understand that surrogates are, by design, emotionally flatter than their bipedal primate counterparts, that doesn't quite excuse their stiltedness.
Ideally, a chillier approach may have been required. Imagine the subversive possibilities if this concept had landed in the clutches of bio-identity enthusiast David Cronenberg.
Yet steered by Hollywood journeyman Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3), the movie resembles a surrogate itself: polished, functional but dead behind the eyes.
(This film is rated PG)
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