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Techtite's Movie Reviews! |
"While it could've been absolutely classic with just a little spit and polish, this was a well done adaptation of a great graphic novel." --from the review ------------- Sidebar :: ------------- No Sidebar Comments For This Review. Yet... ----------------- Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted! ------------------
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SurrogatesReview by TechtiteThe funny thing about Bruce Willis is: when he's in sci-fi, it is bound to be worth watching, whether the story is good or bad. Whether he's being chased by two zombie women in Death Becomes Her, exploding a giant meteor in Armageddon, stuck in an insane asylum in 12 Monkeys, seemingly untouchable in Unbreakable, or even chasing the titular "Fifth Element," you're bound to find a Bruce Willis sci-fi movie, at the very least, worth a rental. All he needs each time is a decent script to make the movie really good. Well; here we have a movie based on a popular graphic novel. Is that a good enough story...?Before you answer that, let me refute every early bird review out there that implied this was just another I, Robot or another The Island or another The Matrix or another Logan's Run or...well, whatever hackneyed suffix so-called "critics" added to the phrase "This story is just like [insert WRONG comparison here!]." Instead, this movie is about a future society where humans live privately in their homes, as their perfect and never-aging lookalikes, or "surrogates," live their lives for them in the real world. How could this future happen? Well, in a brilliantly summarized prologue in the movie: someone created human-controlled lookalikes, strictly as a means for the handicapped to “live” like normal people in the real world. The idea is then used strictly for vanity purposes by the rich and foolish, as a way for them to look beautiful, perfect, and never aging. The vanity of "surrogates" becomes the latest fad, and suddenly, nearly everyone is staying at home as they "live" their lives via their perfect-looking "surrogate" doppelgangers. The good news is that since a user cannot feel pain or death via their surrogate, crime is at an all time low. The bad news is: someone's found a loophole. The first murder in years has just been committed downtown. The first detectives on the scene are the surrogates for Detectives Greer (a surprisingly young-looking Bruce Willis, complete with a full head of hair!) and Peters (Radha Mitchell). At first they are a bit apathetic about the "murder" because it's simply the destruction of two surrogates. They then try to contact the surrogates owners and discover that they are both dead as well. Apparently; some sort of new weapon is able to overcome the safety protocols and kill both surrogate and user as well. The chase is on to find the killer, and the weapon, and stop them both. Here's where things get truly interesting. In time Greer learns that the only way he can safely seek out the killer is to not patrol the streets as his surrogate, or else he'll be killed just like the first victims. So he turns off his surrogate and out of his apartment comes the "real" Greer, aka the real aged Bruce Willis...much to the chagrin of Greer's wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike). In fact; Maggie hasn't let Greer see the "real" her since an accident that scarred her for life and killed their only son. If Maggie is in need of a wake up call about vanity, well...so does everyone in this movie (and sadly most of the real world...though I digress). The resulting story is brilliant on so many levels. This is no mere bug hunt to chase down a madman. It is a mystery with several layers and multiple suspects. There's the original creator of the surrogates, Canter (James Cromwell), whose only son was the first person murdered by the surrogate weapon. There's a strange man known only as "The Prophet" (Ving Rhames), who decries surrogates though seemingly decries violence as well; is he the obvious suspect, or just a red herring? Yet the really complicated moment is when the story makes it clear that at no point does a user "have" to choose a lookalike of their younger self, as their surrogate. They could be anyone at any time (or even the opposite gender). In short: the murderer could be anyone...so how can Greer possibly find him or her? While "beauty is only skin deep" is an obvious moral here, there's an even bigger message here: the more you try and hide within a shell, the harder it is for the "real you" to come out at all...or for that matter, your own emotions. There's a moment when Greer and Peters have to break the news to Canter that his son is dead. His surrogate suddenly freezes and we see the older Canter in his wheelchair crying. A similar moment happens when Greer tries with all his might for his wife to just come out and see him and not "see" him via her young, virile, and fake surrogate. While Maggie's surrogate stands in front of Canter firmly and without any emotion, we see the wife in her bedroom as a tear falls down her cheek. These are two examples of many effective moments in this movie, that should not have been so quickly disregarded by so many critics. Surrogates is, indeed, a good movie. If it has one flaw, it's that it was directed by Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3) and not, to be blunt, someone more suited to comic book stories turned into movies. If this brilliant graphic novel's cinematic form was offered by, say, Sam "Spider-Man 2" Raimi or Christopher "Batman Begins" Nolan; who knows what kind of epic masterpiece this could have been? Yet to be fair: even at its worst this film is pretty good, which is either a testament to Mostow's direction or the story. You decide which, when you see it for yourself.
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