Total Recall - firstly, I agree with the general consesus that Total Recall 1990 did not need a remake, especially when Len Wiseman’s updating draws more on Verhoeven’s original than on Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” - which I suppose is a given when an invading army of field mouse-sized aliens with “destruction sticks” would be difficult to portray on screen as a serious threat.
Baffingly, Len Wiseman also throws out the entire Mars terraforming plot that was central to the original (Quaid never goes to Mars in this, although there is one reference to him wanting to go. Maybe they’re saving it for a sequel?) and plumps for a closer-to-home plotline where Earth has been ravaged by chemical warfare, leaving Britain and Australia ( the latter known as The Colony) as the last two inhabitable regions and the evil governor of Britain (played by Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston -underused) who has his beady eyes on the valuable extra living space The Colony represents, plots to exterminte the pesky unclasses who reside there by means of an android army takeover which seems to have been cribbed straight from I, Robot.
Oh, and there’s a giant elevator called The Fall that allows oppressed workers to commute between territories, where they spend their days creating robot cops to fight a false terrorist threat created by the big bad so he has enough droids to kill everybody in The Colony.
I’m not a fan of movies that use robot armies as a plot device: they are boring and repetitve to watch, and being robots with no indivduality, are completely devoid of character. Sure, robots are meant to be free of individuality and character, which is precisely why they should not be the focus of a story that aims to enterrtain. Like with Iron Man 2, the pace drops every time a 'bot appears on screen.
It’s a shame that they had to default to such a tired device and make it so integral to the story, especially when they could’ve easily tweaked the terraforming idea to rejuvenate Earth’s poisoned atmoshpere.
Having said that, it’s far better than I expected. The good points outweigh the bad : Wiseman throws in some sly nods to the original - look for twists on familiar moments: Quaid’s new method of disguise is stand-out and there are aspects of set design that look to other Philip K Dick movie adaps for inspiration - notably Blade Runner and Minority Report -more an attempt to form a cohesive PKD ‘look’ than lazy design.
The Biel, Beckinsale and Farrell combo works well, even though Biel’s character is under-written and Beckinsale’s over-cooked (a perk of being married to the director, I suppose, but she overshadows the main villain by some margin by being an amalgam of Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside in Recall 1990 - the result is that she is annoyingly tenacious and survives far,far longer than she should)…
Farrell acquits himself well in a role that was originally tailored to Arnie’s natural strengths. He is no Arnie, but he does a good job of hiding his natural douchiness . I’m actually warming to him as an actor. With In Bruges, The Fright Night remake and this, there’s hope for him yet.
So, I still think this was unecessary, but it’s a well-executed waste of time. Like Quaid though, you’ll probably feel a nagging sense of deja vu throughout.
