New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

That first conversation between Quaid, (here a factory worker) and his wife (Kate Beckinsale) has a bit more weight to it than that found in the original film because Farrell is actually a decent actor. The production design of the film is respectably run-down without being dazzlingly shadowy. There's a definite nod to work done on genre classics like Blade Runner, but the grungy, multicultural metropolitan decay doesn't come as much of a revelation here and it adds little to the overall premise. Tired of monotonous life in the decay, Quaid is persuaded to try memory implants of something sexy - memories of being a secret agent. Quaid is tested for compatibility with the system, but fails. He is accused of being an actual secret agent - something he does not remember. He returns home. His wife attacks him and the chase is on.

From there, the film takes the kind of path that the original film did, only without the whole business of Mars and all of the silliness that took place there. This aspect of the film is a bit more true to the original story, but it's the only aspect that draws it any closer to that story than the original film.

The remake preserves the tricked out, "is this real or is it an implanted memory," thing that was going on in the original film, but the central drama here is one of a man on the run. The problem with this film, as with the previous one, is the fact that the action slows down the central appeal of the story rather than playing with it as it could.

It's refreshing to see decent acting in an action film again, especially when the film focuses on it as much as this one does. Director Len Wiseman does a really good job of blending that drama with the action (far better than Verhoeven did with the original.) The problem is, without a script that embraces the themes that make the story so interesting, it's just another competent blockbuster. It lacks the spark of originality that saw it nominated for a Nebula award. It's a competent sci-fi action film, but that's not enough to make this a terribly memorable film. And in a summer like this one, that may not even be enough to see this film breaking even at the box office.

The Verdict

While far from his best work, Dick's We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is a fun twisting of reality dealing with repressed and artificially implanted memories that was fresh and novel enough when it was written to get it published in one of the most prestigious anthologies in the genre and subsequently gain quite a bit of critical acclaim. Borrowing a few elements of that story, the 1990 film Total Recall took those elements and added them into a Schwarzenegger sci-fi action blockbuster that had a bit of cerebral punch to it. Lacking the kind of novelty that the original film had in 1990, the action remake with a vague interest in the nature of reality lacks enough appeal to be all that resonant in 2012. The truly weird thing here is that 2012's Total Recall is actually a much better film than the original. It just happened to come along a couple of decades too late.

Continued:       1       2       3       4