Review: Total Recall
An important rule in film criticism is to review the movie you saw, not the one you wanted to see. That's ironic, since the hero of Total Recall is a guy who gets into trouble for trying to have his fantasies implanted in his brain as memories and thus experience what he wanted to see. It's also a relatively impossible rule to follow for a film that is itself a reimagining of something as iconic as Paul Verhoeven's 1990 adaptation of the 1976 Philip K. Dick story 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.' The number one question in every fan's mind is "Will it be as good?"
So, a little background refresher about one of my all-time favorite films, which I will assume you have seen at least once. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Douglas Quaid, a miner on Earth who nightly dreams that he is on Mars with an exotic beautiful woman who is definitely not his wife. Frustrated by his boring life, Quaid visits a business called Rekall that performs mind-altering procedures to create the memories of a vacation at a fraction of the cost of a real trip to Mars. However, it is discovered before the secret-agent portion of his memory implant is completed that Quaid actually IS a secret agent from Mars whose mind has been altered to keep him safely out of commission. Immediately attacked by his handlers, including his "wife," he escapes and travels to Mars, where he meets the beautiful girl from his dreams, Mileena. Together, they uncover the plot of evil Martian dictator Vilos Cohaagen who controls the air supply. After uncovering the remainder of Quaid's memories with the help of the telepathic leader of the Martian resistance, they activate an alien terraforming machine that frees the people from reliance on Cohaagen's air.
Verhoeven's tale expanded Dick's short story, which was more cerebral with little action, into a blockbuster adventure that originally was to receive a rating of X for extreme violence until shots were re-edited. For the 2012 re-adaptation, Kurt Wimmer (Ultraviolet, The Thomas Crown Affair, Sphere) and Mark Bomback (Unstoppable, Live Free or Die Hard) have penned a screenplay directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard) that removes many of the most fantastic elements replacing them with a solidly earthbound plot. Total Recall is an action-packed homage to Verhoeven's 1990 film, painted with a visual palette mixture of Ridley Scott, Luc Besson and Spielberg's Minority Report. The stunning visuals and superb score by Harry Gregson-Williams, however, can't fill the empty pit resulting from the removal of the Martian plotline.
The new Total Recall begins like the first with Colin Farrell's Quaid waking from nightmares, but only after we sit through a heavy-handed explanation about mankind's wars making the Earth uninhabitable except for the area around Great Britain and another patch in former Australia now called The Colony. Workers from The Colony travel in a tunnel through the center of the Earth to work in a cylon factory in former Great Britain.
The ensuing story is an entirely recognizable PG-13 watered-down homage. The composition of some shots and choreography of several fights were identical to Verhoeven's, and these nods to the previous film were enjoyable. But the removal of Mars, mutants, telepaths and aliens brings the story down, reduces the fantastical elements and eliminates the dreamlike quality. The most brilliant part of the 1990 story was that one could make an argument that everything was in Quaid's head and that he truly was suffering an embolism due to a botched implant procedure. By the end of Wiseman's adaptation, there is no argument or question that everything has happened in the real world.
Like the plot, Bryan Cranston's version of villain Vilos Cohaagen is watered down. Cranston is playing a general who is still fighting a war and never displays the malicious bile Ronny Cox brought to the role in 1990. It's almost possible to sympathize with him, and that makes less sense when considering the idea that Quaid is a supposed to be a double-agent planted in the resistance but secretly working for Cohaagen who then turns on his friend and general to join the resistance for real.
This is all colored by a very fond remembrance of Verhoeven's Total Recall and viewing it a number of times in the upper double digits. It is impossible not to compare the two movies, and if you're a fan of the first, it's safe to say this one's enjoyable, prettier to look at with a little more action and a little less story. If you had problems with the 1990 Total Recall, this one is slicker, eliminates most of the humor and corny one-liners, and you may find it a good watch. Get your ass to the theater.