"Surrogates" ** (out of four): Like the titular avatars in this graphic novel adaptation, "Surrogates" is a rote whodunit masquerading as a techno-thriller.

There are some interesting ideas rattling around inside "Surrogates", Jonathan Mostow's serviceable graphic novel adaptation, and they're all packed into the first five minutes. During an impressively expository title sequence, we are brought up-to-speed on the events of the past fourteen years. It seems the pursuit of brain-controlled artificial limbs has led to the invention of full-sized prosthetic bodies that can leave the house and perform daily tasks while their human owners (or "operators") lay at home on comfortable recliners wearing high-tech goggles. In the fourteen years since the introduction of these "surrogates", human beings have stopped going outside. Crime, racism and disease have all but vanished (for some reason). Only a radical splinter group of humans (called "Dreads") protests the surrogates, but they've been relegated to small, sovereign reservations scattered throughout the world.

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