Surrogates (Blu-ray)
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
Studio: Touchstone
Year: 2009
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 89 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English; Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish, French
Subtitles: SDH, French, Spanish
Region: A
MSRP: $ 39.99
MSRP: $ 39.99
Release Date: January 26, 2010
Review Date: January 16, 2010
The Film
3.5/5
A sci-fi thriller with an interesting premise that does a pretty good job hiding its plot inconsistencies and believability stretches, Jonathan Mostow’s Surrogates is better than its middling box-office performance might lead you to believe. A top-flight production with excellent special effects and a nice acting challenge for Bruce Willis in two leading roles provides the film with a high degree of accessibility and some thoughtful musings on the value of the human touch.
In the not-so-distant future, human beings have chosen to live their lives through surrogates: perfect, youthful android-like mechanisms who are tied into their hosts’ thought processes in such as way that they are virtual extensions of the original live beings. With life-threatening dangers from urban living now a thing of the past (since the hosts “think” their robotic alter egos from the comfort of their own homes), crime rates have gone down, and life is good for most of the world. But there are factions of the civilized world who don’t like the idea of humans not living in the real world, and these protesters have gotten their hands on a machine gun-like weapon that not only destroys the androids but the hosts on the other end of the thought waves, too. Detectives Thomas Greer (Bruce Willis) and Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) are hot on the trail of the destroyer weapon and the man (Jack Noseworthy) who’s firing it, but that information only leads to a more sinister conspiracy at higher levels of control both on the human anarchist side led by The Prophet (Ving Rhames) but also from the eccentric inventor (James Cromwell) of the surrogate technology whose son’s surrogate is among the first to be wiped out by this weapon of potential mass destruction.
After directing Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Jonathan Mostow now undertakes another doomsday thriller. Here, in a very compact eighty-nine minutes, he crams together two very well done chase scenes and a clock-ticking climax with literally the entire world on the brink of extinction. The premise of John Brancato and Michael Ferris’ interesting screenplay was taken from a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. The idea of a couch potato society operating through their brain waves using (often but not always) physically perfect specimens of the real humans is a very novel one (the film begins with an excellent sequence condensing fourteen years of scientific theory that leads us to the point of the start of the story), and for a change instead of the robots going awry, it’s actually human beings who are on the verge of annihilating their marvelous inventions along with the rest of the world as we know it. There are some missing links in the story construction which make the film noir-like mystery the detectives are trying to solve a little less than smoothly presented, but by the end of the movie, we understand the key heroes and villains and recognize the justifications behind their actions. But Bruce Willis’ real persona must survive a horrific car crash that surely would have killed any normal human being, and yet he walks away from it with only minor abrasions to his face. Leave your sense of disbelief at the door before watching this film.
Bruce Willis plays two roles in the film: his human counterpart and the idealized twenty-years-younger version of himself (achieved through very heavily applied CGI to erase age on his face), and he turns in another excellent dramatic turn as the human yearns for a return to a life with his real-life wife (not the surrogate she insists on using) and the android remains stoic in the face of overwhelming odds against him. James Cromwell gets some strong dramatic moments as the inventor who loses his son due to his own miraculous invention and then begins to wonder if the miracle isn’t actually a nightmare. Jack Noseworthy shows both contempt and panic as the assassin on the run while Ving Rhames makes his brief appearance as The Prophet, a strong advocate for a return to a totally human society free from any surrogates, register strongly. As for the other key players, since their characters are androids throughout the film, their most important job is to play the indifference of the machines as their primary emotion, and Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike (as Willis’ wife), and Boris Kodjoe (as Willis’ boss) all triumphantly succeed at burying their feelings behind these rigid CGI-erased face masks.
Video Quality
4.5/5
The film’s 2.40:1 theatrical aspect ratio is delivered in a very pristine 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. The image is as sharp as can be, but colors are a bit variable due to an occasional blue-green filter that’s sometimes applied to the daylight photography to simulate an alternate reality. Certainly, there are no quibbles with black levels, and shadow detail is unimpeachable. The film has been divided into 17 chapters.
Audio Quality
4.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix does a first-rate job with the very active split surrounds which continually invade the soundfield. The LFE channel gets a very good workout from the frequent crashes and explosions, and only the slightest tendency to pull back on some instances where ambient sounds in the surround channels might have been advised prevent this from reaching reference level quality.
Special Features
3/5
The audio commentary by director Jonathan Mostow is a well spoken and interesting one. Though he’s usually screen specific with his comments, he never fails to venture away from the scene at hand to offer up anecdotes about the filming or the original book in discussing its transition to the screen.
All of the bonus feature material is presented in 1080p.
“A More Perfect You: The Science of Surrogates” is a fascinating 14 ½-minute featurette illustrating the aspects of scientific technology we have today that are very close indeed to the science on display in the film. Scientists conjecture about the possibilities of the motifs in the film becoming part of reality some day.
“Breaking the Frame: A Graphic Novel Comes to Life” contains interviews with Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele who wrote and illustrated the original graphic novel The Surrogates about their conceptions for the story and illustrations and then screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris and director Jonathan Mostow commenting on their vision of the material for the screen. This runs 6 ½ minutes.
There are four deleted scenes (actors playing surrogates in these scenes have not been digitally scrubbed so they do not look as they do in the finished film; it’s interesting to study the contrasts as before and after CGI) which may be played individually or in one 6-minute grouping.
“I Will Not Bow” music video featuring Breaking Benjamin incorporates clips from the film and runs 3 ¾ minutes.
The disc contains trailers for, among others, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Lost University, and Everybody’s Fine. The trailer for Surrogates is not provided.
In Conclusion
3.5/5 (not an average)
Surrogates is an entertaining sci-fi film noir which combines action with some thoughtful questions about the value of human connection versus the possibilities of a perfect world without crime or violence. The Blu-ray release contains outstanding sound and picture and some bonus features not offered on the standard DVD of the film. Recommended!
Matt Hough