Remaking a cult classic is always going to have it’s detractors. The original Total Recall is perceived as a successful Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle with some interesting ideas about identity and reality. So good luck to whoever is going to try and top that. With the production team promising to deal more with the original story, is the Total Recall remake a superior film to the ageing Arnold killing spree? Surprisingly, yes, and no.
In the future, the human race is limited to two tightly confined mega cities; the United Federation of Britain (London) and The Colony (an Asian influenced Australian city); which are linked by a subterranean capsule train called ‘The Fall’, and while The Colony’s residents are considered inferior, and are financially and politically worse off, they commute to the UFB everyday for low level work.
Bored of his life and haunted by crazy secret agent dreams colonist Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell, Horrible Bosses) takes a trip to memory implant company Rekall; which goes wrong, and blows both Quaid’s memories and his cover; now on the run from his sleeper agent wife (Kate Beckinsale, Underworld) and UFB dictator Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad), Quaid must discover the real him, and save the planet, with rebellion member Melina (Jessica Biel, The A-Team).
The big four lead roles from above aren’t that inspiring; you can feel sorry for Cranston because he’s the most charismatic person in the entire film, and more than reliable as the evil leader, but, despite Cohaagen being the main villain in the original Recall, he is relegated to near background levels here, getting shunted for the infinitely poorer Beckinsale, whose role is expanded to the ultimate extreme, and despite being this supposed amazing secret agent, comes across as dull and near useless thanks to Beckinsale’s boring deliverance.
Biel didn’t really add much to the role of Melina either; coming across as nothing but a basic damsel in distress; proving it’s a massive mistake to cast Biel and Beckinsale in the same film, because they’re too similar in terms of both looks and ability. But if that wasn’t bad enough, Farrell wasn’t even interesting Quaid; distracting from his own reasonably interesting story with the same facial expression throughout the film.
All this stems from some rather naff direction. Len Wiseman’s directorial history is a bit limited (only doing the first couple Underworld films and Live Free Or Die Hard), all of his previous films are quite action based with hardly any plot, making him probably the worst choice of director for a new Total Recall; even his claim to focus on the original Philip K. Dick’s short story falls flat, with the interesting themes of identity and reality being pushed further away than in the original Total Recall.
Wiseman is also a fan of the evil ‘fluster-vision’ used in The Bourne Legacy. Whilst not as bad as Bourne, the supposedly “cool setpiece” technique is used when Quaid wakes up at Rekall, but the problem with it is there’s a 360 degree camera that jumps about the scenery, looks poor, and moves slow, ruining what could have been an otherwise exciting action sequence.
Yet the worst thing with Wiseman being director is the sickening amount of nepotism between him and his real life wife Beckinsale; the original role for Beckinsale’s character in the 1980’s Total Recall lasted 10 minutes tops (as a foil to establish the upside down turn of Quaid’s life), but here it’s over-expanded to the point where it becomes no longer threatening, just to give Beckinsale more things to do when she doesn’t need to do anything.
It’s also hard to connect with Recall, because with such a highly computer generated output (with magnetic flying cars and super crowded cities where tower blocks are built on top of tower blocks) the film feels massively fake; of course it’s set in the future, and has things like futuristic technology, but there’s hardly anything to attach you to the events going on. Mind, it is fantastic looking fakery; it’s top notch CGI throughout, and worth the money spent.
There are some lovely ideas here from a sci-fi perspective; The Fall is a fantastic idea (solving the problem of travelling between the two locations) and answers personal questions straight away when they pass the Earth’s core (they simply rotate the room when they pass it – otherwise people would be turning up at the other end upside down wouldn’t they?), and, while not particularly new, the constant upbuilding of multi level cities and building anywhere possible is a cool looking visual.
Whilst not being the best and some might argue it’s only funny because it’s an Arnold movie, the original is still thought of as a perfect blend of action and humour, so compared to that there is no humour in this film (apart from laughing at the fact a production company called Original films is actually filming a remake), and it’s all so straight-laced and serious it’s difficult to engage with, plus the remake elements are totally unnecessary; there are nods to the original Arnold Schwarzenegger classic but there’s so much new material here they only serve as a distraction to what could have been a perfectly fine action film in it’s own right; you have things like the three breasted woman and the “two weeks” lady for little-to-no reason, and every memorable scene from the original we already know about since they’ve all been seen in the trailers.
If you haven’t seen the original Total Recall before, you can easily add another 2 to the score below, as there are some entertaining and original ideas here to make this version at least watchable, but looking upon it as someone who has seen the Arnold cult classic, it’s simply an odd contradiction; because the the remake aspects are highly unnecessary, spoil what could have been a perfectly fine action film, and create a film that, for once, has some original ideas, but still ends up being a rubbish remake.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
