Surrogates is a movie about a future utopian world with some dark secrets (as it seems most future utopian worlds seem to have). Where most movies of this style (i.e. I, Robot, The Island and Minority Report) throw in healthy amounts of action to supplement their underlying message, Surrogates sticks closer to a pure sci-fi story. Unfortunately, the lesser degree of chases, explosions and otherwise general Hollywood escapades (there are some, just not as much as the aforementioned films), means that Surrogates has quite a few scenes that tend to drag on and can leave most viewers expecting even doses of action with their sci-fi feeling a bit unsatisfied.

The film takes place in a world where humanity has developed technology that can read human thought and translate it into similar movement on a robot. The initial research of the design was to allow handicapped people to go about life like normal. For amputees, this means replacing a limb that reacts exactly like the one they lost. At least, that was the goal of the technology's creator, Dr. Canter (James Cromwell). In the years since his technology became public though, it has resulted in full body replacements where people can order an avatar, ... umm, I mean surrogate, of the shape, size, color, and beauty they want and have it replace them in their daily lives. As a result, most of humanity spends its days in a chair designed to read their commands, while the surrogates relay the visual, audio and other sensual data back to the operator.

This is mostly accepted as the new way life should be lived. There is a self-isolated group called The Dreads who have built their own reservations where surrogates aren't allowed. Here, people are actually people. They are led by The Prophet (Ving Rhames). While The Dreads seem to be opposed to everything that goes on beyond their walls, they do seem to live peacefully with the rest of the world as long as no surrogates get onto their land, of course. Well, it seems they live and let live until the start of this movie, that is.

The main plot of Surrogates has our hero, Agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) tracking down a weapon that not only disables a surrogate, but also kills the operator. This is a major issue since one of the benefits of surrogacy is to be able to experience pretty much everything with no risk to one's self. Greer and his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell) end up chasing down this weapon, but finding it results in Greer's surrogate getting fried and the agent having to go the rest of the movie on his own, without the robotic crutch. Now in the outside world for the first time in years, Greer finds himself skittish (after all, he can be hurt now) and starting to be aware of what he has been missing all this time.

The DVD version of Surrogates only has a couple of special features on it. One is a music video, and the other is an audio commentary by Director Jonathan Mostow. I have to say, if given the choice between this version and the Blu-ray one, I would have to recommend the higher definition version hands down. While Surrogates looks good in both resolutions, there is (of course) a great jump in quality with the newer media. Plus, the Blu-ray version has a few more special features.

Surrogates is a good, solid, sci-fi film. It just doesn't quite compare to other similar utopian movies like I, Robot. What it offers is fun, but there are just too many areas where it slows down. Surrogates is definitely worth a rental for pretty much any movie fan (whether you like sci-fi or not), and most solid sci-fi fans will want to actually purchase the film, but a majority of people will be satisfied with the single viewing.

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