Total Recall (2012)

Remaking popular films just 22 years after the original is not an unforgivable sin in and of itself; when the resulting remake is as bland as Len Wiseman’s version of Total Recall, then it becomes unforgivable. Shiny and sleek when it should be violent and provoking, Wiseman’s Recall mostly removes everything that makes the material interesting in the first place and instead replaces it with flashy chase scene after flashy chase scene. It’s still a tolerable film—Wiseman is actually quite skilled at directing action—but it leaves absolutely zero impact. There’s very little imagination at play here, and the deeper themes at play only boil to the surface when it’s most convenient for the plot. Paul Verhoeven’s original is not a flawless film, but it works on far more levels than Wiseman’s could ever hope to achieve. At least Verhoeven brings his brand of subversive violence and humor to the table. Wiseman doesn’t have much to offer in between all the sprinting.

The role of Douglas Quaid, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original, is now inhabited by Colin Farrell. He’s a blue-collar worker who is frustrated with how his life has turned out, and as a result he visits Rekall; where a group of scientists will implant a memory into your brain. Essentially, all customers pay to live out their fantasy. Things start to go wrong once Quaid’s operation starts, and soon he discovers that his whole world is not what he thought it was, including his marriage to Lori (Kate Beckinsale). Doug unwittingly finds himself between the corrupt government (led by Bryan Cranston) and the resistance (led by Bill Nighy). As he learns more and more about who he apparently is, he starts to question whether this is reality or if this is just his fantasy.

The leads are part of the problem. Schwarzenegger was hardly the best choice for the role of Quaid in the original, but he brought much more personality to the role than Farrell. I am not knocking Farrell as an actor, but when you give him a role like Quaid he can have the tendency to drift into “generic leading man” territory. (Contrast that to last year, when he gave two very amusing supporting performances in Horrible Bosses and Fright Night.) His two female co-stars also seem a bit too… plain. Beckinsale at least has her moments as the “wife,” but Jessica Biel (as the resistance’s Melina) doesn’t do much with the little she is given. These roles aren't the most fascinating things in the world, but none of the actors are able to elevate their characters beyond just being a type.

Then there’s Cranston as the villain, who clearly has fun but once again isn’t playing the most complex guy in the world. A vast majority of the time he is giving stern orders on a computer screen, and when we finally meet him he is asked only to be the maniacal villain. If you accept the film’s “alternative” reading, one could argue that all the characters are meant to be types, but that doesn’t necessarily help when the rest of the film is so aggressively uninteresting. None of these roles were much meatier in Verhoeven’s version, but the universe he created was much more fun to explore. We’ve seen Wiseman’s universe a million times before; down to the vast, weightless CGI cityscapes.

That said, Wiseman does a lot of things well. If we weren’t talking about a new version of Total Recall, some may in fact praise it as a solid, dumb action movie. (To bad all those ideas get in the way.) As much running and shooting as there is in this movie, it’s usually well-directed running and shooting. There’s a purpose to how he shoots these sequences, and he doesn’t resort to the Bay method of cutting every two seconds just for fun. Some of Wiseman’s tricks are a bit stale—an early scene in which Farrell lays out an entire squad of police officers in one shot has precisely zero excitement to it—but if we give Wiseman more movies like, say, Live Free or Die Hard he may have a long and successful career. Just don’t ask him to think too much.

Total Recall does itself no favors by adhering to the same exact structure as Verhoeven’s original. Sure, the story is remarkably different, but it has all the same beats. Whenever the film completely lifts a scene from the original, it is—without exception—done worse. In particular, there are two very important scenes (one about halfway through, the other toward the end) that are meant to have incredible impact. In Verhoeven’s film, these scenes were incredibly surprising. Here, they hardly even merit the raising of an eyebrow, and it’s not just because the other movie did them first. It’s because Wiseman’s Total Recall is a wholly commercial product while Verhoeven was actually aiming for something. Any ambition in this new version is entirely accidental.

Grade: C