Every couple of years, Hollywood sees fit to remind us that creating artificial intelligence to aid humans in mundane tasks will lead to the annihilation of mankind. The last example, Pixar’s Wall-E, is guaranteed to make viewers think twice about becoming a couch potato and slave to technology.
Surrogates, based on a graphic novel of the same name, takes a slightly difference approach to the rise and fall of robotics. In man’s quest for eternal youth and perfected vanity, he has invented “surrogate” versions of people; a robot “avatar” if you will that a person can jack into and control out in the real world with their mind while their real body slowly rots away in a recliner. This technology becomes a drug as nearly everyone relies on it to live their lives except for a group of people called the “Dreads” who prefer to live a natural, “real” life.
Testing the survival of the Utopian society is the first murder by a surrogate, something that the system’s design should never have allowed. Surrogates are directly traceable back to their owners, but this case which officers Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell, Pitch Black) take on prove problematic and difficult to solve. It should not have been; the breadcrumbs for who is behind the murder and who is not are scattered in plain sight and easy to follow in his surrogate body.
Tom’s inevitable shelving of his surrogate after it is severely damaged early on and readjustment to using his own flesh and blood body in the real world opens up Pandora’s Box. Are we willing to essentially kill our true selves early to live a dream life a little longer than nature intended? Most would think so including Tom’s wife who finds it impossible to interact with real Tom versus younger and more handsome surrogate Tom. If you have seen Wall-E then you know there is only one way it can all end with Tom reverting to the way things used to be, and it does.
Director Jonathan Mostow brings is penchant for action to Surrogates with some big and fun scenes including a personal favorite of mine, ‘assault with a deadly javelin parking meter.’ Like his Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines effort, Surrogates falls victim to mediocre sci-fi storytelling overshadowed by multiple chases, gunfights and explosions. Secondary characters like Dreads’ leader The Prophet (Ving Rhames), surrogate technology inventor Dr. Canter (James Cromwell) and Tom’s boss Stone (Boris Kodjoe) are all dealt fates without ever getting a chance to really understand them. Five minutes trimmed out of action to expand their stories and really get into their heads would have been a great first step towards Surrogates becoming a more fulfilling and less fluffy tale.
Surrogates successfully offers a relatively unique high definition video presentation in that the film’s narrative dictates unique visual styles: one smooth and artificial for the Surrogate characters, and one highly detailed and gritty for their human counterparts. On the former, you might expect the AVC-encoded 2.35:1 1080p transfer to be littered with digital noise reduction. After all, the use of this often frowned-upon means of cleaning up a print results in an artificial effect. But this transfer manages to maintain natural grain and simultaneously make the Surrogates look like “Barbie” people without the need for DNR. Blacks remain extremely strong and dark throughout while the deliberately blue-tinted world is faithfully rendered save for some outdoor color tinkering in the film’s first third.
A key action sequence to conclude the first act provides much of the audio punch in Surrogates’ 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. This sequence that starts as a car chase and then expands to the air is full of artificially created deep swooshes, weapons firing and a helicopter crash. Surrounds are generally active throughout, especially as Tom jumps across large shipping containers while in pursuit of a suspect. The clanging of his shoes on the metal appears to come from up and behind, the same vantage point of the man being chased. Bass extension is also fantastic and reaches deep for all the small and big bangs, which more subtle conversational moments throughout the rest of the film offer crystal clear fidelity and balance across dialogue, Richard Marvin’s score and a host of ambient effects ranging from a symphony of sounds that project from a bustling big city to the mechanical bleeps and blips of Surrogate and future technology at work.
Aside from an audio commentary, all of Surrogates’ relevant bonus features are exclusive to Blu-ray. There is not an abundance of material to pour through but just enough to get a flavor for how the film came to be and what it took to bring the future world of human surrogates to life.
BD Exclusive: A More Perfect You: The Science of Surrogates (14:34, HD) – A “Terminator” type look at where real life robotics are at and how the technology is evolving towards the existence of a robot that looks just like a human. Some of the artificial skins created for prosthetics are disturbingly realistic. The technology is great for its owners but probably bad for future generations when it becomes available to those with ulterior motives.
BD Exclusive: Breaking the Frame: A Graphic Novel Comes to Life (6:33, HD) – Taking the concepts of the graphic novel and adapting them for the big screen. Some comic frames with added animation are shown that closely match to what ended up in the film which is a nice touch to eat up much of this short featurette’s run time.
BD Exclusive: Deleted Scenes (6:03, HD) – A series of four brief and relatively inconsequential deleted scenes offers one that is moderately intriguing with Tom and Peters in a strip bar where the bartender has an extra eye on the side of his head and Tom is sent away because he is a “freak” for being in his human body versus a Surrogate.
Audio Commentary – Director Jonathan Mostow goes behind-the-scenes on the film by literally starting off by telling you that is what his commentary is going to do. There is little humor as Mostow prefers to focus on dissecting each scene’s elements and technical construction for those deeply interested in the creation of the film as opposed to offering additional entertainment value which a second commentator might have helped with.
Also included is the “I Will Not Bow” Music Video by Breaking Benjamin, yet there is no theatrical trailer or digital copy which should have been a given on this release.
Minds get blown in Surrogates but its strengths are not mind-blowing enough to be remembered as one of the Bruce Willis’ best action titles. The ride is entertaining enough to be reminded again that choosing a destiny born out of laziness and vanity is an extremely bad idea. And the Blu-ray presentation is almost perfect, even if the bonus features are not as extensive as expected on a big new release that action icon Willis headlines.
– Dan Bradley
Shop for Surrogates on Blu-ray at a discounted price from Amazon.com.
