Total Recall Review

Director: Len Wiseman

Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, John Cho and Bill Nighy

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 118 mins

Synopsis: Factory worker Douglas Quaid wants a break from his frustrating life and visits Rekall for a memory implant of a super-spy. But when the procedure goes wrong, Quaid finds he is a hunted man, and begins to question reality…

You know you’re getting old when they start to remake films from your own lifetime. This started when Will Smith tried to recreate 1980s magic by producing his own son in a remake of THE KARATE KID, a film that I can still not bring myself to sit and watch. The bloody cheek. I love the original KARATE KID, but nothing comes close to the affection I feel for Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 masterpiece TOTAL RECALL, a violent-as-hell SF behemoth, and the best of all Schwarzenegger’s movies from that era. Who could forget the lines; ‘If I’m not me, then who the hell am I?’ or ‘Consider that a divorce’ or even ‘You ever fuck a mutant?’ Classic.

In 2012, the film has received a $150 million facelift from Len Wiseman, the filmmaking genius that has brought us such gems as UNDERWORLD, UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION and DIE HARD 4.0. You see, I already have a few problems with Mr Wiseman: firstly, his movie star good looks (he’s one of the most devilishly handsome directors working in Hollywood today); secondly, he gets to sleep and do unimaginable things with Kate Beckinsale every night; and thirdly, he has not only destroyed one of my most beloved franchises of all time in DIE HARD, but has also messed with my favourite science-fiction film ever. That said, and the boys on the site will tell you, I was very positive and had a very open mind going into the first UK screening of the film. Perhaps too positive.

The first thing you’ll notice about this update of the classic Phillip K. Dick story ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’, is that it ain’t got a thing to do with Mars. Colin Farrell’s Doug Quaid does indeed not want to ‘get his ass to Mars’ in this at all. Still set in the future, the story revolves around the two remaining inhabitable places on Earth, the United Federation of Britain and The Colony, both of which are battling for political power. The Colony, which is basically Australia, and the UFB, which is effectively the UK and part of Europe, are connected via ‘The Fall,’ a vast tunnel that goes right through the Earth’s core. Living in The Colony, everyman Quaid, who is happily wed to the beautiful Lori (Kate Beckinsale), commutes to his day job as a factory worker in the UFB, a mundane 9-5 from which he desperately wants to escape. Enter Rekall, a company that can provide memory implants of anything that your heart desires. Following a drunken night out on the lagers, Doug decides to pay Rekall a visit and throw across a few futuristic notes to buy a fantasy/memory of life as a secret agent… and that’s when the ahem, fun really starts…

So you’ll know the story if you’ve seen the original, or indeed read the 1966 short story. If you haven’t, then the least amount of info you know about it the better. For that reason, I’ll try not to go into too much detail.

My main concern was that Mars is such a huge factor in the Verhoeven original and I couldn’t see how TOTAL RECALL could work without it. The truth is, they have come up with an interesting concept to replace it, so it doesn’t really matter. That’s good right? The future isn’t bright here; it’s very dystopian, overcrowded, and looks a complete mess, but I love the idea of the two continents and The Fall connecting them, and really bought into it as it was introduced and explained during the opening frames of the movie. The second thing I liked about the film was Colin Farrell. I bought into his version of Quaid right away and he’s possibly one of the few people that could pull the role off – he’s always watchable and TOTAL RECALL is no exception. The third thing that I looked upon positively were the special effects. I saw a rough version of the first Rekall scene nearly a year ago without the CGI, and the guys the effects have really nailed it with superb attention to detail, especially the scenes set in London: the horizontal elevator sequences half way through, the intense car chase, and those scenes through out which involve The Fall.

So the negatives. Where to begin? The tone of the film is best described as a simplified BOURNE movie meets CHILDREN OF MEN. In fact, the whole film plays like a massively dumbed-down version of the original. I remember watching the 1990 film thinking, and I quote the poster here, ‘What is real, and what is Recall?’ and that was the beauty of it, the thing that made us revisit it time after time. With this, I thought to myself, It’s clear that’s really happening, and that’s real, and that’s really not what it seems to be… etc etc’ (if that makes any sense). On another note, Kate Beckinsale’s Lori is a heavily developed character here, and she features in many more scenes than Sharon Stone did in Verhoeven’s version, and indeed any other character bar Farrell and co-star Jessica Biel. Beckinsale is a beautiful woman and a superb talent, but I didn’t vibe with her version of Lori. She annoyed me more than she should… and with a face like that. Still, we get to see her in a pair of very small panties, which which was nice. Then there’s the great Bill Nighy and Bryan Cranston (superb in his unmissable role in BREAKING BAD) both hugely wasted here with their presence limited to off-screen references and just a handful of scenes.

The problem is that nothing wowed me. It’s perhaps a little over long at 118 minutes, and while new fans may warm to it more than those of the original, I can’t say that I did. While it had a lot of action, great effects, a talented cast, beautiful city scapes and three-breasted women, it lacked any emotional investment in any of the characters, any form of humour, engaging storyline, bloody violence and edge of your seat tension. Basically it lacked Paul Verhoeven.

Total let down, more like.

 TOTAL RECALL is released in UK cinemas 29th August