Surrogates

[ewx]

The background to Surrogates is that the bulk of the American population (and, by inference, the rest of the rich world) has recently and rapidly started using mechanical “surrogates” in their daily lives, with their real bodies staying at home in control rigs. As you might expect, the surrogates are almost universally tall and beautiful, though there remains a substantial spread of skin colors: the intro says that discrimination is ended, but evidently not simply because everybody migrated to white skin.

The plot begins with a murder - an unusual occurence in this world. Into this are mixed Bruce Willis as detective, his colleagues in the police, the inventor of the surrogates and a colony of Dreads (who reject - violently - the surrogates and everything to do with them).

On past form Willis should have been well cast in non tough-guy mode, and indeed for much of the story he plays his role well. However on a couple of occasions his character descends into a violent anger which seem a better fit to Die Hard than the rest of this film.

The biggest fault in the film is that it does not really take on the big question: are the surrogates (i.e. and therefore techonologies that impinge on our way of life) on balance good or bad? Crime is down (etc), but almost all human contact is buffered via the surrogates. Some characters do directly address these questions, but they are all clearly presented as Bad Guys, rather sabotaging their contributions. Others seem to stray into the territory but are evidently basing their decisions upon their personal concerns: they may indeed be in entirely character but again, as a contribution to the wider question, it is undermined.

In the end, it seemed better to understand the film as a satire on Hollywood and how we see actors: hiding behind every strong, physically perfect, immaculately groomed surrogate is a ordinary person, scrawny, unbeautiful and unkempt, and sooner or later it matters.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the whole graphic novel, but a skim suggested that it asked tougher questions than the movie did.