This remake of the 1990 classic stars Colin Farrell as Douglas Quaid, a factory who suspects he might be a spy after going to Total Recall - a place which implants memories into its clients minds for a price. This version doesn't take place on Mars, yet its story reveals are very lazy and the sequences which deviate from the original are uninteresting. As a film it really has no soul, feeling nothing for the characters or their relationships. Taking out the iconic Mars concept from the original and replacing it with the generic shiny metal look, the viewer has nothing interesting to latch onto outside of an empty commentary on class struggle. For a film that seemed to want to distance itself from the original, everything is rather lazy from a storytelling perspective like the filmmakers assumed you had seen the Verhoeven version. The viewer is just told about Quaid/Hauser's relationships instead of letting us see them unfold. For example, the relationship between Hauser and Melina is awful, with no real sense love or chemistry whatsoever. There is no real mystery to this story, taking out all of the fun parts that made Verhoeven's film such a delightful experience. It's actually amazing but the only way to describe this version is as a snooze fest. I will be the first to say that I do think Len Wiseman is a fairly talented action director, who does a good job constructing the scenes. The editing and cinematography during these action sequences were pretty impressive, delivering a few specific sequences that are enjoyable on an escapism level. The world which the film creates was better than expected but not on the large scale, rather the ingenuity used for some of the gadgets and devices - the phone concept being particularly fun. Overall this version of Total Recall is absolutely forgettable as a film - just watch the original, you'll have way more fun. 4/10
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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