In the alternate universe imagined in Jonathan Mostow’s new film, Surrogates, Earth is altogether more pleasant. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s population, we are told, sits in bedrooms, clad in sweatpants, using mind control to guide fantastically lifelike robots through the daily chores of everyday life. It’s a sort of über-videogame on a global scale. By using your “surrie,” in the movie’s parlance, you can jump really high, look a lot sexier than you actually do, and shut yourself off in the middle of uncomfortable conversations, leaving your cyborg staring blankly into space.

Despite an utter lack of crime, thanks to surrogates, there is for some reason still a Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has continued hiring agents with Painful Backstories in the tradition of every FBI film ever made. One of those is Tom Greer (Bruce Willis, as beleaguered as ever), who mourns for his son and his relationship with his wife (Rosamund Pike). She’s a stylist who hangs with a younger set, obnoxious (but beautiful) chuckleheads with a fondness for getting high, through their cyborgs, using some kind of ghastly shock therapy. When the son of the inventor of surrogates is murdered in Boston, field agents Greer and his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell) are on the case, investigating via their own much better-looking robots. (Willis hasn’t had this much hair since Die Hard.)

My mind kept wandering during Surrogates, but not because I was bored; it’s hard to grow weary during an 88-minute film. It was more that nagging questions kept bubbling up about this plasticized world, like, How did 98 percent of humans each afford a fully-functioning cyborg? Was there a special deal for the impoverished, or was it covered by Medicaid? And, if all the world’s militaries use dispensable surrogates as the film shows, then why are there still wars? Mostow and his screenwriters, Michael Ferris and John Brancato, aren’t shy about satire; surrogate fans refer to actual humans as “meatbags,” and a poster for X-treme Football shows a fist gripping a robot’s severed head. But a sci-fi drama more interested in exploring everyday life in such a place would have been fun.

Instead, we have CSI: Plastic People, where Greer and Peters are tracking down a criminal (the wonderfully named Jack Noseworthy) who keeps popping off real humans via their surrogates. His weapon of choice would be right at home in District 9, as its particular punch comes from liquefying the brains of humans. Naturally, this implement of destruction is a hot commodity, and the Pentagon is interested.

But first, our FBI agents follow the killer to a commune of anti-robot humans, a kind of perverse back-to-the-land movement where members enjoy crucifying cyborgs and are screened at the front gate for metal body parts. Their leader is a bearded and dreadlocked prophet (Ving Rhames) who is named, subtly, the Prophet and lives in a Winnebago full of shag carpeting and heavy weaponry. After a particularly dangerous pursuit into the human zone (where we learn that surrogates bleed green), Greer is cut off from his cyborg self and must pursue the case with his own eyes, out in the open, with no blond hairpiece to protect him.

I’m making it sound a little sillier than it is; Willis’s long-suffering detective is at times affecting, even as he’s bloodying his fists while pounding a laughing surrogate to bits. But there is almost too much going on here as the action begins to heat up late in the film, with car chases and acrobatic robots and double-crosses involving characters whose names you may not have remembered. (You may expect, from far out, what the ending will be.) But it’s fun for a while to lurk around in this disturbing world, even if we are beaten senseless by the film’s didactic messages about beauty and human interaction. If it has any effect on our actual, surrogate-free lives, so much the better; at some point, a world in sweatpants must confront itself.

Exclusive Surrogates Interview: Stunt Legend Simon Crane on Double Bruce Willis Action and the Secret Talents of Jolie and PItt — Read Interview Now!

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• The Science Behind Surrogates
• Do the Robot! The Man Behind the Surrogates’ Funky Movement
• Behind the Scenes at Surrogates
• Exclusive Surrogates Interview: Stunt Legend Simon Crane on Double Bruce Willis Action and the Secret Talents of Jolie and PItt
• Wired Does the Science Behind Surrogates
• Warlords Review: Jet Li Can Act! Kick-Ass!