Movie review: Surrogates

by John P. Meyer

You know how, in a virtual world, you can inhabit any sort of sexy avatar you choose? And how you can never tell for sure whether that hot babe you're chatting up (and who's chatting you up right back) is a hot babe in real life, or maybe instead a chunky albino mouth-breather who bears a closer resemblance to Jabba the Hutt than Megan Fox?

Well, Surrogates is like that -- only in real life.

The story unfolds some unspecified number of years into a shiny new future where most people conduct their business -- and their pleasure -- while inhabiting biomechanical skin rigs referred to by their operators as "units." Meanwhile, the operator (i.e., the person whose consciousness inhabits and directs the unit) reclines comfortably in a chair with electrodes attached to his or her head and goggles covering his/her eyes. We get all the background on the development of these surrogate entities through a series of newsreels presented over the opening credits. Before you can say "too much exposition," we're plugged into the movie's weltanschauung and ready for all the functionally-enhanced android action it can throw at us.

Which is pretty dang entertaining as far as that part goes, with FBI agents Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) each getting to show off (on separate occasions) their radical leaping and punishment-absorbing abilities. Why the leaping and absorption? There's a dangerous felon at large wielding a high-tech energy pulse weapon that can not only take out the units at which its signal is directed -- it also kills the operators behind them.

VSI, the corporation which makes and markets "surries," finds this development unsettling, to say the least -- while the leader of a radical group of "meatbags" (i.e., actual human beings who walk around in their own bodies, for cripe's sake!) thinks it might be the answer to his prayers. This dreadlocked dude, known to his followers as The Prophet (Ving Rhames), presides over a "unit-free zone" on the outskirts of the city.

There are some thought-provoking applications for the surrogate-based technology as envisioned in the film, such as wars being fought entirely by unit-drones (with bunkers full of reclining be-electroded soldiers), and the quite believable side effect of out-of-unit anxiety that must come when one emerges into the gritty streets in their own skin after years of never having to do so. But the core story (from Terminator Salvation scripters Ferris and Brancato) plows well-turned ground, centering on the power-mad Canter and the virtually omnipotent infrastructure that has resulted from his reality-changing invention.

Keyword: virtually, because every human-created system has its vulnerability, and computer nerd Bobby (Devin Ratray) is just the scruffy-looking fellow to find the backdoor into Canter's code. Which he does with seconds to spare when the lives of billions are depending on it. (Oops. Spoiler.)

The filmmakers (under the direction of Jonathan Mostow) do a fine job of making the surrogate characters look just a little bit off -- a little too waxy-faced to be real. Their operators, on the other hand, are shown to be wasted, pale, and decrepit, like long-term couch potatoes whose wardrobes consist of nothing but house slippers and bathrobes. We get the strong impression that they might very well stink, too, though thankfully Smell-O-Vision functionality was neither considered nor implemented.

The great moral lesson to be learned, it's implied, is that the bodies God gave us are the ones we ought to be living out our lives in, regardless of whatever seemingly miraculous technology comes down the pike.

Which seems a damn shame in regard to transgendered folk, who would have an easy time switching out -- um -- units to meet their preferred requirements.

I guess that's what virtual worlds are for.