Stop me if you’ve heard this one before... A guy named Quaid (Colin Farrell) is unsatisfied with his life. Sure, he’s got a smoking hot wife (Kate Beckinsale) and a solid 9 to 5, but there’s something missing. Sometimes he feels like he was meant for something more, and every night he’s haunted by action-packed dreams where he and some other smoking hot brunette (Jessica Biel) are being attacked by government agents. What’s a restless fellow to do? Luckily Quaid doesn’t live in our present, he lives in the future, and there’s a company named Rekall that claims they can implant his brain with memories that will make his wildest fantasies come true. Should he partake? Sure, why not? The only thing he’s risking is having his brain completely fried and accidentally mixing himself up in government matters that have world-ending consequences.
If it sounded in the previous paragraph like I was describing Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 film, Total Recall, I wasn’t. I was actually describing Len Wiseman’s 2012 film, Total Recall. If you’ve seen the original, then it would make sense that we jump right in and start talking about what’s different and what’s the same this time around. If you haven’t seen the original, then how dare you? I can’t believe we’re even friends. Go back and see that one, come back here, and then we’ll talk.
The biggest difference between that Total Recall and this is that this one completely changes the setting from Earth and Mars to Australia and Britain. As a matter of fact, Mars, mutants, ancient aliens, and atmosphere reactors don’t so much as make appearances in this story. I guess it’s supposed to be more like the book or something. What the new setting allows Wiseman to do is go nuts crafting a completely different-from-the-Verhoeven-film look for his version of the story. While the 1990 film is claustrophobic and feels very set-bound, the world of Wiseman’s film feels expansive, lived-in, and intricately designed. Full disclosure here: I’m a sucker for future cities, and Wiseman has created a couple of beauties here. His future version of Britain is like a more realist take on Star Wars’ shiny and new Coruscant, his future version of Australia a less abstract but equally Asian-influenced and grimy version of the world of Bladerunner, and they’ve both got some of that cramped overpopulation from The Fifth Element going on. If there was one thing here that always held my attention, it was the eye candy. These future cities were so much more fun to explore than Mars. The flying cars were so much cooler than Johnny Cabs. And, in those respects, Wiseman proved his film to be a worthy remake.
But, aside from that, this thing was something of a bore. Despite the fact that nobody is getting their ass to Mars, Wiseman and his screenwriters (too many to list) somehow manage to follow Verhoeven’s version of the film so closely, beat-for-beat, that watching it felt like listening to an old man re-tell the same story you’ve heard him tell one million times before, to the point where you can now mouth all of the words along with him (little sweet shop on the other end of town...). The action, admittedly, happens on a larger scale, but its the sort of generic and coincidence-filled action stuff that you really have to turn your brain off in order to enjoy. It’s fun enough that you don’t get hung up on plot holes, but not so thrilling that you’re staring at the screen in awe. The third act had scenes of so many faceless, boring, cannon fodder villains lining up for battle that I was getting horrific flashbacks to the Star Wars prequels, but it also contained a fun zero gravity sequence on a train that reminded me quite a bit of “Ender’s Game,” so we’ll call the action a wash.
The big place where this Total Recall falters and reveals itself as a waste of time is in its characters and the performances from the actors who brought them to life. Who are these people that we follow for two hours and fifteen minutes? Other than being a guy with brown hair who is sometimes good and sometimes evil, how would you describe Farrell’s character? Other than an evil girl with brown hair and a good girl with brown hair, how would you describe Kate Beckinsale or Jessica Biel’s? The character work in this movie pretty much stinks. Even Bryan Cranston, who I generally love in everything, is just being generically gruff as the villain. Verhoeven’s version of the film might look dated, and Schwarzenegger might not be the strongest actor in the world, but the main thing that the original Total Recall had over this one is that it had personality. From the motor-mouthed cab driver, to the gruff mutant revolutionary who lived at the whore house, to the quiet dignity of Kuato... that movie was packed with enough memorable characters that people are still revisiting it today. This one is absolutely vanilla, and you’d be hard pressed to pick anything out of it that really stuck with you.
I’ll close by talking about lens flares. Lens flares, like “shaky cam,” have become something of a controversial subject, and it feels a little old-hat to address them at this point. Yes, we all know that J.J. Abrams likes to fill his movies with lots of lens flares, and he ends up taking a lot of flack for it. It’s a style thing or whatever, and while some people don’t mind it, some people find it to be pretentious nonsense. For me, I’ve never had much of an opinion about lens flares. In movies from the 70s that were shooting with a lot of natural light, they’re pretty charming. In modern films that use them for affectation, they feel kind of phony... but whatever. Here though, this was the first movie that ever made me have a visceral reaction to a lens flare. Wiseman fills his frame with blinding, manufactured beams of light, literally every third shot. The punishing effect of his lens flares is near constant, and when coupled with the too digital quality of the film’s frames, you find yourself constantly taken out of the (retread) story and reminded that you’re watching a movie somebody made, rather than being transported to a future world where basic ideas of memory and identity are called into question. And, if I can’t watch a Total Recall movie to escape from this awful world, then what the hell is the point of making another one? Sure, you should judge every movie on its own merits, no matter what came before it, but come on!
