The lean/mean pretense-free thriller has been so out of fashion for so long that I was suspicious of Surrogates for its running time alone: surely the picture couldn’t have arrived at 89 minutes on purpose – there must’ve been heavy studio fiddling afoot, implying another lifeless, impersonal big money movie catastrophe with an abbreviated or barely existent third-act (or first or second for that matter). Such is the relief of Surrogates that, not only is the picture a sleek, confident, one-presumes intentional 80-some minutes, it is also that rare big money genre picture that you wish were longer. Why couldn’t Transformers, which is gleefully up to absolutely nothing for the better part of three hours, have traded running times with Surrogates, which has a high-concept so suggestive its just about destined not to live up to it?
Surrogates is refreshing for the same reason it’s limited: its efficiency, while appreciated, also squashes its personality and expression, which could and should have been ample given the premise, which is similar to certain Philip K. Dick, the movie Minority Report (yes, it too, is based on Dick, but it is certainly not the same animal), and the recent Gamer. Dick had his brilliant, occasionally moving paranoia of loss of identity, Minority Report had Spielberg’s peerless intensity of movement, and Gamer had its creators’ delirious love of/contempt for trash as satirical weapon. Surrogates has a dependably pared older-man Bruce Willis performance, a few creepy moments that hint at the greater picture that might have been, and a few sharp, succinct action beats that don’t even really belong with the rest of the movie.
The premise, taken from a comic book, is another reaction to our mutating media addictions. Surrogates are approximately life-like mannequins that we control from our homes, so we can remain presumably safe from outside danger, and live vicariously through an extension that lacks our physical deficiencies. We can have the sex, looks and physical prowess that we always resent ourselves for lacking.
This premise is wrapped around a stock murder mystery similar to pictures like L.A. Confidential and, again, Minority Report: where cooperations turn out to be eating one another alive as we pay the price. The murder, of a bigwig’s son, you’ll have worked out before the end of the first act. This would be acceptable as necessary for structure if less emphasis were placed on the murder; if it were used as a path to more specific and original riffs, but that isn’t, disappointingly, especially the case. The most obvious metaphor is mostly ignored: that the surrogates represent our best shot at assuming the identities of the celebrities we follow and resent in roughly equal measures. The picture particularly misses this subtext with the subplot between Willis’ cop and his wife, played as a surrogate by the appropriately icy, impersonally attractive Rosamund Pike. You assume the filmmakers are ahead, or least in step, with you in the casting of Pike alone: always gorgeous, always a non-entity on the screen, Pike represents the ideal we shouldn’t have of ourselves. We wait for the real wife, cocooned in a room that Willis tries, unsuccessfully, to reach throughout the picture, to be revealed as a more vulnerable, soulful actress. But it’s just Pike in not-that-great old age make-up – a pivotal moment almost dashed, if it weren’t for Willis.
The picture should also, with such a silly yet dead-on premise, be funnier: it seems unaware of the potential that can be had from Willis’ surrogate’s uncanny resemblance to Bruce Willis in his more ridiculous, blatantly pretend-hair performances (such as Color of Night). Surrogates fails to play on the differences and similarities between humans and surrogates in general, and it also, for the most part, neglects the liberating aspects of the surrogates, why this device would be so tempting to hide behind.
The other huge overwhelming “miss” of Surrogates is its impossible-to-fathom assumption that everyone would have a surrogate, which is harder to believe than the existence of the devices themselves. Not everyone could possibly afford a surrogate (I make allowances to afford coffee) and this resentment, yet another illustration of the widening gulf between haves and have-nots, would be an influence on the anti-Surrogate movement, here represented by Ving Rhames in a part clearly meant to recall Bob Marley and Che Guevara. The anti-Surrogate movement is the most pathetically imagined part of the movie, as it relies on the usual grass-roots underdog of the future world clichés (living in voluntary poverty, big speeches, etc.)
This has the tone of a pan, but, limitations aside, I liked the picture. Surrogates occasionally has the inventiveness and intensity of director Jonathan Mostow’s Breakdown, and it has wonderfully suggestive little bits, such as a method of executing the surrogates that blows their eyes out of their heads, killing the human users in the process. This special effect, achieved with a bunch of lights so that the picture can keep a PG-13, registers as more of a violation than most of the typical blood and guts we see in a typical R. An image near the end of the picture – of surrogates suddenly dropping dead – has the implicative dread that Cameron Crowe was aiming for in the opening of Vanilla Sky. But the most haunting effect has Willis trying to reach his wife through her manufactured creature, and, upon angering her, watching as her surrogate freezes in a look of terrifying…accommodation. If someone had used their head, this movie could’ve been this decade’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
It Might Get Loud has an irresistible premise: of past and present guitarists wandering around and eventually meeting up and discussing the electric guitar and jamming. The guitarists have been shrewdly chosen: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2, and Jack White of The White Stripes. Chances are you’re interested in at least one of those men (and for those keeping score at home: I love Zeppelin and White, can largely take or leave U2), and, if you don’t, chances still favor you wondering what the hell they might trigger in one another. The picture, directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) has a wonderfully wooly, restless, follow-these-guys-around spirit, but it disappointingly treats their meeting as an excuse to follow them separately as they wax, to largely banal degrees, on their own muses. Writers, regardless of level of craft, tend to know one thing: the most boring question you can ask a writer or artist pertains to their influences, because they don’t really know, and if they do, the answer is so intensely personal and abstract it’s entirely meaningless to anyone else. Natural conflicts in these guitarists’ sensibilities (The Edge continually tinkers with technological amplifications of his sound while White tries harder and harder to restrict and challenge and par himself down) aren’t allowed to develop, and the picture takes a good hour and change to get to these guys properly playing together. It Might Get Loud is still worth watching for the musicians’ guarded-yet-vulnerable presences (Page has an appealing, effortless Wise Master vibe that anchors the picture, White has an endearingly focused, intent apprentice stare, The Edge is surprisingly approachable) but you’re left wanting more of the little eccentricities such as White’s revealing of the motivation behind his band’s elementary, primary color shtick (to add a defensive coat of irony in case people ridiculed a white boy playing essentially bluesy, “black” music). Surrogates and It Might Get Loud reveal themselves to have a surprising commonality: they both distrust “the man” while undervaluing their endearing alternatives.
The Muriel for Director of the Decade can be found 
