Fear of a Bot Planet

“Surrogates” is the kind of movie where people start walking out of the theater right after the climax, without a care in the world about what happens next. That speaks volumes for what they think of the characters – no one cares to see them try to move on with their lives because they do nothing to earn our feelings for them, which is probably what makes this film so transparent. On top of resorting to the usual routines that hold lots of other Hollywood action films back, it wastes a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of a premise that could’ve gone somewhere.

We’re told in the beginning that it takes place in the present, even though it looks a lot like the future – almost everybody on Earth uses surrogates, humanoid robots that look similar to their owners, who use them for every task imaginable. The humans get to experience everything that their surrogates do from home with the use of wearable machinery, which emulates all five senses. The robots look fetching, but looks can be deceiving: When we get to see the humans behind the controls, most of them look pretty homely by comparison.

Bruce Willis stars as FBI agent Tom Greer, who investigates an attack on a surrogate that wound up murdering the person behind the controls. Even though humans usually aren’t in any danger whenever their surrogates are destroyed, the murder weapon here is a top-secret ray gun from the government that leaves humans dead at the wheel. (The only flaw that the weapon has is it gets jammed whenever somebody wants to fire at Bruce Willis.)

Tom and his partner, Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell), discover that the victim’s father is Dr. Canter (James Cromwell), the guy responsible for making and selling surrogates. Canter, of course, made a fortune from his invention, but not everybody is thrilled with the idea of robotic doppelgangers in everyday life – the Dreads, ordinary people led by the Prophet (Ving Rhames), detest surrogates and say they’re abominations.

Does that kind of rhetoric sound familiar to you? “Abomination” is a word that turns up a lot when anti-gay groups rant about homosexuals, which probably means that the makers of “Surrogates” wanted to inject some satire into the story. It wouldn’t be fair to spoil a major plot point for you, so let’s just say that anybody familiar with some of the leaders behind these organizations shouldn’t be surprised by a secret involving the Prophet’s identity, and we’ll call it a day.