In the future, most people have abandoned their real bodies, preferring to embed their consciousness in the titular surrogates - idealized robotic bodies. FBI agent Tom Greer (Willis) is not at ease with this, in particular his wife's (Pike) refusal to interact, except on a surrogate-surrogate level. Greer and his partner, Peters (Mitchell), are investigating a murder, where the human died when his surrogate was killed. The victim turns out to be the son of the man who invented them, and this is potentially just the tip of a plot to wipe out, not only all surrogates, but all those who are using them. The tentacles of this plot include not only the boss (Kodjoe) of Peters and Greer, but a great deal higher up the chain.
I definitely think this should have been better than it was - there's scope for a much more interesting film, exploring a society in which the surrogates operate. Instead, we get nothing much more than Willis (and his creepy-looking surrogate) running about investigating things, albeit in a society which looks like an Abercrombie & Fitch advert. I'm struggling to find much to say about this bland piece of Hollywood action/SF - truth be told, I'm trawling the net, reading reviews by better critics, in the hope of finding something to make me go, "Oh, yeah, that's what I thought!" It's best described as a half-warmed hodgepodge of ideas from (mostly) far better movies, with any contemplation of what it means to be human, buried in a breathless rush by Greer towards saving somewhere around a billion people. No, really: that's what someone says. It largely sums up my lack of interest here, that the scale of this potential disaster provoked absolutely no reaction at all.
D
[August 2010]
