Total Recall... The Remake

Total Recall (2012)

30% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 222 reviews)

Runtime: The Director's Cut was 130 minutes

Directed by: Len Wiseman

Starring: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine

From: Several different companies, including the ultimate irony of one of them being ORIGINAL FILM

I saw this unneeded remake last night; it's not terrible, but it looks bad in comparison to the great original classic w/ Schwarzenegger. I talk all about it below in my Letterboxd review:

NOTE: The version I am reviewing is the 130 minute long Director's Cut rather than the Theatrical Cut; reading about the differences between the two, no wonder people hated this as soon as it came out; theatrically it sounds quite bad, the main reason them getting rid of much of the ambiguity.

I wasn't sure if I should be watching all those sci-fi movies in a row... then I remembered that the review I posted last week of the original Total Recall turned out to be one of the most popular I've ever done. Thus, I figured this was the right time to see the remake, which I always ignored as why does a classic movie even need to be remade? Even some positive takes from reliable people online did not change my mind; still, on a whim I decided to take a chance so that's what I did. This wasn't awful-there certainly are plenty of worse remakes out there-but compared to the original 1990 movie, this doesn't compare in terms of quality or sheer entertainment.

The movie is different from the 1990 original yet it isn't any closer to being accurate to the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” and the story told here isn't as good as what we saw in 1990; that is a gigantic problem as you can't help but compare the two when stretches of dialogue are lifted, some moments from the original are lifted but done differently, and the one-liners we got here weren't as good as the OG product; “but I give good wife” is not something I enjoy in any context, and it pales in comparison to lines like “See you at the party, Richter!” and “Consider that a divorce.” Instead we get nonsense about how chemical warfare wrecked most of the world in the late 21st century except for Western Europe and Australia and an elevator goes THROUGH the Earth to transport people between the two sides... getting your ass to Mars is more realistic than that, needless to say.

Yet, I can still say that this is average. At least it's watchable. Len Wiseman is someone I never really even think about, as I avoid those Underworld movies like they have the Zika virus and I thought Live Free or Die Hard was bad, although it looks good compared to A Good Day to Die Hard. In terms of direction, during the action scenes, the camera does move around but it isn't that shaky-cam crap and you can usually figure out what's going on. Sad to say, in this era that is commendable. While all of them are in small supporting role, at least there's a little diversity with characters played by the likes of John Cho, Bokeem Woodbine and Will Yun Lee. Maybe people of color should have head the lead roles, as the performances of Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel are about what you'd expect from them. Farrell is no Schwarzenegger, that is for damn sure.

Overall, to say that this is average is better than what I expected, but with the Director's Cut I say that it's true. The CGI at least looks fine (even if it pays tribute to J.J. Abrams by having lens flares up the wazoo), there's plenty of interesting details in that futuristic world and the action scenes aren't bad. Yet, you can't help but compare this to the Paul Verhoeven classic when the character names are the same, and this pales in comparison to that. Things are just bland and flavorless in comparison.

Two last things: In this world, there's also a woman with three breasts, although I have no idea why as it's not a world of mutants... unless it's the “chemical warfare” that did it, but probably not. Maybe it's like that woman from Florida who said she got implants so she could have a trio of boobs, but that was proven false. By the way, more than one person I know actually knew that woman personally; I swear this is true. Also, the funniest moment of the picture was seeing that one of the production companies behind this was an entity named ORIGINAL FILM. Incredible.