Surrogates presents a futuristic world where humans are too lazy to do anything and let their proxy bodies do everything for them; hence the title. It’s a perfect world where crime doesn’t exist. But the peace is disrupted when a robot was toasted, along with its human controller.
Agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) was brought in to investigate the rare murder case and in the process he uncovered a bigger plot that can threaten the peaceful existence of the Utopian world. It involved an armed resistance group opposing the use of surrogates and the company that produced the androids.
Bruce Willis still has it in him to be a badass action star and he proved it in Surrogates. He carried it through bad CGI effects and second rate action sequences. It has the advantage of having an interesting plotline that entices the audience to keep on watching. Acting-wise, everyone did well. Aside from Willis, Surrogates also featured Ving Rhames, Radha Mitchell, James Cromwell, Rosamund Pike, among others.
The Prophet (Ving Rhames): Look at yourselves. Unplug from your chairs, get up and look in the mirror. What you see is how God made you. We’re not meant to experience the world through a machine.
Older Canter (James Cromwell): Surrogacy is a perversion. It’s an addiction. And you have to kill the addict to kill the addiction.
We might not have androids at present but most of us have another identity; an online persona that’s totally different from the real one. Maybe it’s time to heed The Prophet’s advice before we lose our humanity, even though it turned out that he’s a surrogate planted by the inventor of the surrogates. In the movie, Greer saved humanity by destroying all the surrogates; kill the addiction. I think it’s better for humans to be on our own than to depend on Surrogates to live our lives for us.
Surrogates is a pleasurable viewing experience and a good reminder that I should spend less time online and more time outside. Wakeboarding looks like a good alternative to World of Warcraft, don’t you think?
