SURROGATES

SURROGATES is a very satisfying, exciting, action packed, sci-fi adventure.

The movie takes place a few years from now when people are living in a heightened virtual world of robotic surrogates. Sitting in specially designed chairs, each individual manipulates their own surrogate, who looks like an improved version of themselves in most instances and goes about the daily business humans used to do.

Bruce Willis does a great job of playing FBI agent Greer. Greer imagines abandoning the world of surrogates. His wife, Maggie, on the other hand, loves living as a surrogate, but Greer misses their human interaction. He wants them to take time off from their surrogates and go to Hawaii.

In the midst of this surrogate world, large groups of human beings, who condemn living life through a surrogate, have set up alternative reservations throughout the country where no surrogates are allowed.

Greer and his beautiful surrogate partner Peters are asked to solve the first murder in many years. The surrogates are supposed to be totally safe, so that if one gets hit or broken, or falls off a bridge, the owner is not affected. But, someone has invented a device of zapping the robot surrogate and frying the brain of the owner at the same time. Greer soon realizes he is up against a vast conspiracy to destroy the surrogates.

The murder victim was the son of the man who invented the surrogates. The corporation that produces surrogates had fired the wealthy inventor many years before. Now, the father is broken-hearted that he has lost his only son. Greer finds out that the plot may be to kill all the surrogates and all of their owners, so the story becomes a race against time as he tries to save the world.

Meanwhile, the anti-surrogate population is being whipped into a frenzy by the messianic Prophet who uses a lot of biblical terms, including resurrection, creation, and faith.

SURROGATES is a very rich, nuanced and rewarding movie with an action-packed, straight-ahead plot. The writing is taut and suspenseful. There’s a lot of very overt Christian dialogue. Much of it, however, is in the mouth of the false Prophet. But, like the movie, TRUMAN, man’s creation pales in the face of the real creation, and the technological creator of surrogates is more of a demigod than a real god. Sacrificial love, truth and reality provide the moral answer to the evil that the hero faces. And, Bruce Willis always plays such parts well.

The action violence in SURROGATES is mostly among the surrogates who are robots, but there is some violence to the humans. The sex is suggestive, but never shown. There is one egregiously offensive use of foul language, but otherwise, it’s pretty lightweight.

The production quality in SURROGATES is seamless. The music, acting and special effects tell the story well. SURROGATES is one of the most rewarding action movies of 2009. It’s a movie some people will want to see two or three times to enjoy, decode and interpret. However, MOVIEGUIDE® recommends caution for children and teenagers.