Boiling the movie's sermon down into a few short phrases, I am left with this nugget of persuasion.

Technology: bad. Relationships: good.

While I understand the point behind that brief statement, or prophetic pronouncement, depending upon how carried away one gets, it seems to me that the truism is really that anything taken to extremes distorts who we are supposed to be.

In the case of Surrogates, based on Robert Vendetti's comics, we find a world where human beings have retreated to the "safety" of their homes and apartments, avoiding each other, their problems, and the world around them. In their place, humanity has allowed a private corporation to outfit each of them with a "surrogate" that goes to work for them, has sex for them, interacts with others for them, etc. And, in general, the surrogate is like an online avatar who appears the way that its human operator wishes he or she looked, usually stronger, better looking, and more suave.

All of this utopia goes haywire when someone kills two human operators by killing their surrogates. Enter FBI Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) who has a surrogate because everyone does, but wishes that he and his wife could work through their "stuff." Most of that revolves around the death of their child in a car accident, but technology and life have blown by them and they've never really worked through their issues. Greer (as is typical to a Willis character) is a rule-breaker, a maverick, and here, a forward thinker. Greer wants real relationships, and he sees the surrogates as an impediment to real life.

I'll avoid delving into plot points and the elements of the "whodunit" but the truth is that the surrogates can stand in for any variety of things that we use to dull our senses. Drugs, sex, money, and technology are referenced as tools that humans use to hide from their shortcomings, their pain, and their fears. In a post-9/11 world, we have become more fearful, more isolated, and more reliant on technology. Surrogates is in many ways an amalgam of other prophetic science fiction tales before it. If Terminator, Minority Report, The Matrix, Blade Runner, and I, Robot all donated genetic material for a film baby, Surrogates might very well be the result.

Surrogates challenges you to consider how much time you're spending "online," or at least away from real people. In a world where Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Skype, and texting dominate our human interaction (or replace it), the movie dares us to log off and embrace someone for real. It's not too far-fetched if you consider "surrogacy" as anything that prevents you from actually interacting with someone else face to face.

In the end, I did find this more fulfilling than the other half of my double-feature (Law Abiding Citizen) because it did point to relationships as meaningful, and living life to the fullest as important. The film might not be gospel-centric but it did show elements of morality and belief that I could dig into: the truth will set you free, money is the root of all evil, you have to lose your life to gain it, etc. In the end, Surrogates is a modern day parable, and only time will tell how much we listen to the potential futures of our world and how we'll respond.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to log off my computer.