3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, and quite generously, for intense, relentless violence and action, brief nudity, sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang
Whatever else may be true, this
sucker moves.
Ultimately, a bit too much.
 |
| Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) thinks he is about to experience a harmless, James Bond-ian fantasy that he'll retain as a pleasant memory. Alas, reality is about to trump fantasy, when Quaid discovers that his life as a blue-collar factory worker isn't quite as "real" as he has been led to believe. |
Director Len Wiseman’s remake of Total Recall starts well and has much to recommend it, most notably plenty of
striking production design and not one, not two, but three imaginative,
cleverly filmed and all-stops-out chase scenes.
Unfortunately, the frantic pace
grows tiresome after that third pursuit, particularly since we’re only halfway
through the film by then. Wiseman and a veritable gaggle of scripters — Kurt
Wimmer, Mark Bomback, Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon and Jon Povill — simply
don’t know when to let up.
This film suffers from the same
problem that derailed the second Indiana Jones epic (Temple of Doom): all
chases and furious activity, with almost no respite. The characters never get a
chance to catch their breath, and neither do we. Successful action flicks
alternate between pell-mell activity and quieter moments: the latter for reflection,
plot advancement and perhaps some tension-easing quips.
Wiseman’s update of Total
Recall is almost without humor, grim or otherwise. While it’s true that Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s outsized presence and personality overwhelmed the 1990
version, at least he cracked wise now and again. This remake’s Colin Farrell
barely gets a chance to smile.
Let it be said, as well, that
this new version doesn’t stray any closer to the Philip K. Dick story — “We Can
Remember It for You Wholesale” — on which both films are (very) loosely based.
The reality-bending premise is present, as is the notion that our hero’s
“false” memories might be genuine (or not) (or not not). Beyond that, Wimmer
& Co. have grafted an entirely new narrative atop this mind-twisting concept.
Not a bad thing, to be sure, and
this new version takes far greater pains to establish its credible future
dystopia: all the more reason to be annoyed when the frenzied melees prevent
our being better immersed in what seem to be fascinating background details.
The time is a century or so in
the future, after chemical warfare has poisoned the majority of our planet.
Only two nation-states have survived: the upscale United Federation of Britain,
and the blue-collar “Colony” — formerly Australia — on the opposite end of the
globe. Colony resident Douglas Quaid (Farrell) commutes daily to a grinding
factory job in Britain, where he helps build robotic policeman on an assembly
line.
