FILM REVIEW: Surrogates

There’s a new Robocop in town


Cinema
Daniel Carey

ONE of the oldest cop movie clichés dictates that a policeman cannot solve a crime until he’s been suspended from duty. So when FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is asked to turn in his badge during ‘Surrogates’, cinephiles can be fairly confident he will track down the perpetrator he’s pursuing.
‘Surrogates’, director Jonathan Mostow’s first film since ‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines’, is based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. The premise is interesting, if rather implausible – that humans have opted to stay at home and allow remote-controlled robots to do their jobs and socialise on their behalf.
These ‘surrogates’ are better-looking than their human operators, who don’t feel any pain from damage done to the machines they control. “Become anyone you want to be from the safety of your own home,” says the advertisement. “Life – only better!”
Many Irish people shocked by the expenses racked up at FÁS have asked why we needed a jobs agency with a bloated budget when there was full employment in the country. Similarly, we might wonder why there’s still a Federal Bureau of Investigation in a future where law-breaking is virtually unknown. Still, when the first murder in 15 years occurs, Greer (Willis in a downright disturbing blond wig) is on hand with his partner, Agent Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) to investigate. The picture opens with a brief history of robots, beginning with a monkey using its thoughts to control an artificial arm, through a US Supreme Court decision to sanction the use of surrogates in daily life. Only a handful of people opt out of this brave new world, opting to live on ‘reservations’ that nicely mirror the aliens-only zones of ‘District 9’. They are led by a mystic known as The Prophet (Ving Rhames).
As well as the set-up, the special effects are praiseworthy and the production values slick. For the most part, the action zips along – there’s a particularly decent chase scene in the human-only section of the city. Most of the characters’ motivations are easy enough to understand, at least until we enter the closing stages.
In short, it’s a decent enough B movie, but fails to live up to its potential. As a football coach whose team has just failed to pull off a complicated manoeuvre might wistfully put it: ‘The idea was good’.
So what’s wrong? Well for a start, outside of the small quarantined areas of the anti-robot brigade, few people seem to have any misgivings about the technology developed by Canter (James Cromwell). At times, I felt rather like Frank Grimes, Homer Simpson’s short-lived co-worker, who wonders if he’s the only man in Springfield who can see that the Evergreen Terrace resident has the intelligence of a six-year-old. Wouldn’t more than a few individuals want to get out of the house now and again?
The film does (kinda) have things to say about inner beauty and the need to live life to the max, but these messages are blindingly obvious to those of us who don’t spend our entire lives on catwalks or computers.
And for a flick which could have gone in any number of different directions, the plot ultimately disappoints. A series of twists are packed into a short period of the movie’s 88-minute running time, and quite why Armageddon is on the horizon still makes no sense to me.  If I want my sci-fi and my crime drama combined, I’ll watch an episode of ‘The Bill’ in a space-suit, thanks very much.

Rating Surrogates 3.5 out of 5