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Surrogates

2/22/2010, reviewed by Amanda Evans

Conceptually this movie sounded interesting. Technology has discovered a way to connect the human mind to a robot body so that people can "log on" from the comfort of their homes and send their "surrogates" out into the dangers of the world. Some people get surrogates that look mostly like themselves (only better looking) but others use it as an opportunity to be different—thin rather than fat, tall instead of short, or even sometimes a woman instead of a man. At first surrogates was a way for lame people to walk and a way to cut down on military casualties, but by the time the movies starts, they have become an addiction. Then of course there are the protesters—people who think it's unethical or inhuman to hide behind closed doors and do all your communicating, working, and living though a perfect looking robot.

The hero of the story is an FBI agent who gets called to a crime scene where a weapon has fried the eyes of two surrogates and somehow melted the brains of the people operating them. It could have gone on from there to be an intense search for answers with an exploration of what makes us human on the side. Instead it was very one dimensional with an illogical lunatic for a bad guy, flat marital problems and an overabundance of ridiculous action sequences. The people protesting that surrogates are inhuman live in slums with a lot of shouting and anti-machine signs. The surrogates are beautiful while the operators let themselves go until they're haggard and ugly. None of this leaves us with any desire to see everyone go back to living without surrogates. And the way the plot was structured was so cliche it was almost funny. This movie was based on a comic book novel and it had about as much depth as one.

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