In the not so distance future people no longer function in day to day society, instead they leave it up to their android counterparts or surrogates to live their lives. It’s not real life – it’s better. Initially the technology is a success, crime is down, murder is non-existent and racism seems to be an issue of the past. However not everyone is happy about the new way of life. Growing groups known as the Dreads, led by a mysterious figure known as The Prophet (Ving Rhames), are slowly popping up all over the world that are against living their lives through a puppet - machine, a life that is not a life but a lie.
When what appears to be the first murder in years, FBI agents Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and his partner Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) are brought in to solve the mystery of a weapon that is able to kill the operators when their surrogates are destroyed. Now it’s a race against time to find the weapon before a virus is set in motion to kill all of the surrogates and the operators running them.
Surrogates shows us a possible path our futures can take us if we aren’t careful. In the day and age of the information super highway, Twitter, texting and all the many ways we live our day to day life isolated and insulated from the real world, is it so difficult to conceive a future much like that of Surrogates? Bruce Willis and the whole cast does an excellent job opening our eyes to the dangers of not getting out there and just being a part of the real world.
Extras
The commentary track with director Jonathan Mostow starts off our bonus material and is excellent. The director does a perfect job of bringing us into the evolution of making this film. It’s a wealth of material and he constantly gives us new things to check out through the course of the film.
A More Perfect You: The Science Of Surrogates acts as both a behind-the-scenes featurette and the truth behind the film and fantasy. It’s a descent feature but it would have been nice to have a separate feature with more interviews with the actors and the behind-the-scenes people.
There are four deleted scenes included in the bonus material. None of these scenes are overall crucial or radically change anything in the final film. Most are just extended scenes but there is one where we see how society has actually acquired a prejudice towards the real people in the cut scene, “What Are You Looking At?”.
Finally there is a music video by the alt-metal band Breaking Benjamin with their song “I Will Not Bow”. The video features scenes from the film and incorporates a loosely-based storyline from the film. It’s only for fans of the band.
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