Surrogates: Techno-Escapism
By DeWayne Hamby

At what point does technology begin to replace the real human experience? Perhaps I'm the wrong person to ask, being the Facebook junkie, Twitterholic and Wii Sports lover that I am. In Surrogates, the latest in a long line of films to address that topic, the viewer is presented with this dilemma in a future world inhabited by sleek robots connected remotely to the sloppier, human versions of themselves who "plug in" at home and live daily life vicariously through their robotic selves.

From the beginning, you can tell that Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) is uncomfortable with the trade off, prompted in part by his wife's refusal to unplug and have any person-to-person contact. As he investigates the first-ever surrogate-to-human homicide, he wades through an anti-surrogate human resistance led by “The Prophet” (Vhing Rhames) and a conspiracy involving the corporation supplying the machines (shades of I, Robot).

The audience is expected to empathize with his plight, but many of them, me included, were busy imagining how far we'd jump and how fast we'd run if we had our own. “You can do anything and you won't get hurt.” Greer is intensely wrestling with his conscience and I'm imagining virtual DeWayne snowboarding down the Swiss Alps. Surrogates, you had me at “plug in.”

Not to say I didn't have any questions. For one thing, there are a lot of cars in this film. And yet you can see the surrogates running faster than Flo-Jo on several occasions. You mean to tell me I have to buy a surrogate and a car for him to ride around in? Also, speaking of costs, in this future, 99 percent of the world's population uses surrogates. So pretty much everyone in the world can afford one if they want?

No matter how cool and easy it may seem to use surrogates, the ultimate moral lesson is going to be to unplug, because, for one thing, crime is almost nonexistent and everyone gets along (shades of Minority Report). So there has to be something wrong beneath all of that perfection. The problem, the film supposes, is the addiction to those ageless, shiny, glossy, beautiful surrogates (if you think it's a tad ironic for a Hollywood film to suggest that, welcome to the club).

It's also ironic that the film is released the same week that Honda unveiled its U3-X, a new personal mobility device in the same vein as the Segway but smaller and more affordable. Will the new devices allow its users to go where they can't currently go and be used to their most noble intentions or will they become a crutch, descending society farther into a technologically-augmented existence?

I'm uncomfortable to make such a blanket judgment for everyone and ultimately, the all-or-nothing approach was the only minor flaw I found in an otherwise perfect science fiction thriller.

Surrogates is rated PG-13 for action violence, which is mostly machine related (little blood), brief sensuality, language and a scene of “drug” use (in surrogates world, it's an electrical charge).