When people are ashamed or afraid of facing reality, they are known to create fake avatars and live a plastic, introverted life. In Surrogates, everyone sits at home the whole day and sends good-looking versions of themselves as remote-controlled androids out into the world.
The concept based on a comic book series is a variation on the Matrix theme. The difference here is that everyone is consciously aware of their alternate existence and survives even if their surrogates are permanently damaged.
But this Utopia filled with forever young, happy folk having a chilled-out time has no chance of survival. Eventually, the crime rate that was once almost zilch rises rapidly as people start getting murdered while still strapped onto their ‘stem chairs’, from which they control their surrogates.
For, the idea of a world at total peace is a myth. There will always be war as long as humans are around. Even if everyone has more than a sufficient share of quality food, water, air, and shelter in addition to all other things nice and desirable. And the greed to be above others is not the only evil reason. Personal opinions that are intolerant to those of others are the most dangerous of all sins.
The film gives a very bad name to nature lovers. They have been transformed from a generically peace-loving tribe who oppose war and inequality to an organization of psychiatrically-disordered people who will kill simply because they are opposed to the concept of machines controlling other people’s lives.
When the surrogate of FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is destroyed, he does the unthinkable: He goes out as himself. Venturing into this imaginary world populated with zombie-eyed toys keyed to laugh, with his cuts and bruises and sad-angry face, Bruce Willis is tough and real.
Faces heavily powdered and hair combed back like wigs, the actors who play surrogates appear as wound up showcase dolls. Unlike these weird characters, the filmmaker is sane. He knows that the only way to put an end to this fashion is by forcing a sudden full stop.
Jonathan Mostow’s sci-fi—murder-mystery action thriller delivers a subtle commentary on where we are heading to as a society breathing artificial air in closed rooms, living in hiding, stuck for most of the time on a chair in front of the internet. And makes a case for a return to the old ways.
