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Surrogates Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence, disturbing images, language, sexuality and a drug-related scene) Genre: Action, Science Fiction Theater release: September 25, 2009 by Touchstone Pictures Directed by: Jonathan Mostow Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes Cast: Bruce Willis (John Greer), Rosamund Pike (Maggie Greer), Radha Mitchell (Jennifer Peters), Ving Rhames (Zaire Powell), Boris Kodjoe (Anthony Stone), James Cromwell (Dr. Lionel Canter), Devin Ratray (Bobby Saunders), Jack Noseworthy (Miles Strickland) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Every now and then, two or three movies will hit upon the same idea at the same time—and right now, the hot topic du jour seems to be remote-controlled bodies. A few weeks ago, we saw humans controlling fellow humans in Gamer, and a few months from now, we will see humans controlling extra-terrestrial hybrids in James Cameron's Avatar. But for now, we have Surrogates, a futuristic sci-fi flick in which something like a billion humans—including nearly all Americans—conduct their affairs through robot duplicates of themselves.

Well, okay, the robots aren't always exact copies of the people who operate them. Near the beginning of the film, two robots—a man and a woman—are about to have a quick little tryst in an alley behind a nightclub, and it is revealed not long afterwards that both of these machines were operated by men. So the whole concept of robot "surrogates" is, on one level, an extrapolation of current anxieties around virtual identities: How do you know that the man or woman you met online really is who and what they claim to be?

Bruce Willis as Agent Greer

On an even deeper level, though, the film is largely about the human desire for safety and immortality, and how we humans need to expose ourselves to risk, danger and even the certainty of death if we are to be truly alive. The story centers on John Greer (Bruce Willis), an FBI agent who rarely leaves his chair at home because he is hooked up to a surrogate that does all the hard work of going to the office, investigating crime scenes and chasing the odd criminal. Greer is good at his job, but he is frustrated because all this technology has come between him and his wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike); he wants to spend time with her, to really and truly be with her in the flesh, but she has locked herself in her bedroom and never leaves it—except through her own robotic surrogate, which looks younger, prettier and therefore "better" than the real person, at least as far as she is concerned.

And so the story alternates between two plot threads. In one, Greer the FBI robot (with digitally airbrushed features and a bad blond wig) investigates an unusual double homicide; the male and female robots that met behind the nightclub were electrocuted by some anonymous stranger, and the shock of the attack not only fried their circuits but killed the human beings who were operating the robots from the supposed safety of their homes. And, in the other, Greer the neglected husband (with grizzled, wrinkled features and a decidedly bald head) pines for the wife who would rather be artificially perfect than real.

Peters (Radha Mitchell) and Greer

There's an interesting idea or two in this film, the script for which was loosely adapted by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato (the last two Terminator films) from a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. But the film doesn't do anything all that interesting with those ideas. Once the basic tension is set up between Greer and his wife, for example, nearly every scene between them repeats the basic point without taking the story anywhere. Similarly, the movie begins with a black screen and a voice telling us we should be satisfied with the bodies God gave us—and that's about as deep as things get, thematically.

But that isn't to say the film is entirely lacking in nuance or ambiguity. Some of the images are quite striking: For example, when a military officer says his men are engaged in "a peacekeeping mission," we see a vast room filled with men sitting at desks and staring at computer screens; the eerie tranquility within that room can't mask the fact that these men are all participating in violence somewhere probably halfway 'round the world. (And how likely is it that the people they are fighting would be able to afford a surrogate army of their own? Are the robots "killing" other robots, or are they targeting real human beings?)

Rosamund Pike as Maggie

There is also an interesting sequence in which Greer—the man, not the robot—pays a visit to a "reservation" that is led by a technophobic "prophet" named Zaire Powell (Ving Rhames). The "prophet" won't allow machines on the reservation, and when one surrogate does show up there, his followers destroy it for being an "abomination" and string it up on something that resembles a cross. So, on the one hand, the people who oppose the surrogates most vociferously come across like religious bigots—and yet, as Greer walks around their community, he sees children playing ball games (no video games here!) and grown-ups tending their gardens, and he seems to admire what they do.

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