I had no expectations of Surrogates. I mean, I didn’t really care for the blown-out, hot-colour look of it, from what little I witnessed in the trailers but I was willing to give it a shot. And you know what? It’s not half bad if you’re in the mood for a simple, fast-paced sci-fi/action thriller.

Surrogates is an adaptation of the Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele comic book series of the same name, about a society of lazy dopes who have taken to living their lives through good-looking robot “surrogates”, controlled video-game style through brainwave interfaces from the comfort of their bedrooms. They never have to leave home. Hell, they don’t even have to get out of their pajamas! Just lay back and let the robots do their shopping, their jobs and all the social activity they could ever dream of. And speaking of socializing, much like online chatting today, you never really know who is on the other end of a surrogate. That young girl robot you’re chatting up at the club might just well be an overweight man in his fifties! Yeah, this is fairly predictable sci-fi fare. A kind of Philip K. Dick-lite story playing with the idea of the subjective nature of societal and personal identities. It’s not conceptually groundbreaking stuff but luckily for us it is the stuff of fun Hollywood adventure fare.

Director Jonathan Mostow delivers a fast paced 88-minute carnival ride of a film, with Bruce Willis turning in a weary yet hard-assed performance as a cop, busting back into real life to put the smack-down on the bad guys after his robot body bites the big one. The short running time keeps the film tight enough to keep you from cutting the plot to threads. And Willis fills every moment with enough charisma that he’s almost able to keep you from wondering why most of the other characters in the film are paper thin. But hey, you know what? In the era of two-hour-plus sci-fi concept-epics, it’s sometimes all right to kick back with a little bit of fun and Surrogates certainly fills the bill.

The Blu-ray disc is a tricky number. Technically, I think the visuals on this thing are pretty nice. It’s got everything you look for in a spiffy, modern transfer. But as a result of smoothing the features of the actors’ faces to make them appear as robotic surrogates (altering skin-tone, erasing wrinkles and pores) the transfer give the appearance of having digital noise reduction applied. This isn’t the case, as you can clearly tell from the grain structure of the images. But that won’t stop you from doing a double take when you’re watching the disc. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is out of this world, so crank the Surrogates Blu-ray up loud!

Mostow leads off the special features with an outstanding audio commentary. If you don’t love the film you won’t be very inclined to give it a listen but he’s got a lot to say and provides a fair amount of insight into the production. The 15-minute featurette ‘A More Perfect You: The Science of Surrogates‘ is a lot of fun, offering up production secrets while educating about the realities of modern robot science. I don’t think it will appeal to most but the real-world science content was honestly a highlight of the disc experience for me. The Blu-ray is rounded out with a featurette exploring the adaptation of the comic to the big screen, some deleted scenes and a really lame music video.

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I love the premise of this film. But something about the trailers and the ad campaign just failed to grab me. I feel like its something about the production design thats putting me off. Or maybe it’s Bruce Willis‘ weird blonde wig. Actually, I think that might be it. Anyway, I love me some Willis, bald or well-coiffed, and will be more than happy to take a crack at Surrogates when it shows up on Blu-ray on January 26th. Details below:

SURROGATES
(January 26, 2010 – MSRP $39.99)
Video: 2.40:1 1080p
Audio: TBA

Special Features:

• Commentary with director Jonathan Mostow
• “I Will Not Bow” Music Video by Breaking Benjamin
• 2 featurettes (“A More Perfect You: The Science of Surrogates” “Breaking the Frame: A Graphic Novel Comes to Life”) (Blu-ray Exclusive)
• 4 deleted scenes (Blu-ray Exclusive)

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PAYCHECK (2003, Blu-ray released May 19, 2009 – MSRP $29.99)

I think Paycheck wanted to be a lot more to a lot more people. And as a result, and is typical of such things, becomes very little to very few. It’s a smart story about smart people, the type that Dick wrote best. Sadly, it’s also one of those stories that found itself ground through the Hollywood meat-machine to become a soulless, gun-toting actioner that disappoints across the board. Ben Affleck plays a guy who just wants a big paycheck and is willing to have his mind wiped to get it. He reverse engineers his client’s competitor’s products and makes newer, better ones in exchange for ridiculous sums of money. But this time, his client’s are jerks and want to kill him. During the time stripped from his memory he was forced to do things that have made him a wanted man. With his clients and the cops on his tail, Ben finds clues that he left for himself, that are intended to lead him to safety.

Everything about this film leads us to believe we’re going to get another Blade Runner or Gattaca but, instead of something imaginative and futuristic, John Woo chose to ground the story in his version of “the world we live in” (read: everyone pulls a gun on everyone else while engaging in pretentious dialogue under a cloud of slow-motion doves). He isn’t interested in science fiction (this is stated directly in the special features) but was convinced to tackle the script by altering the details and bringing the story into the Woo-niverse. I ask you, why adapt a sci-fi story if you don’t care for sci-fi? The result feels hurried and cheap, like a patchwork of styles sewn haphazardly together. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that this film ostensibly ended Woo’s career in Hollywood.

Paycheck looks like a Canadian TV show – Due South, Forever Knight or Woo’s own Once a Thief. The sets feel cheap, photography uninspired. Not really par for the Woo-course. I wouldn’t say that the disc itself looks bad, quite often it’s fantastic with the occasional handful of soft shots which, I assume are inherent in the source print. But it’s impossible to tell. There was just nothing there on my screen to excite me. What a disappointment.

Despite the mediocre nature of the film, Paramount has put some care into this catalogue release giving us great picture and sound and porting over all the bonus features from the previously released DVD. There’s a surprising wealth of bonus features on the disc including a couple of commentary tracks (one by director, Woo and the other by screenwriter, Dean Georgaris), 2 EPK style featurettes and some deleted scenes.

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