Total Recall

Why?! I'm not saying that this remake of Verhoeven's famous sci-fi movie is completely bad, but it’s completely unnecessary and purely commercial with regards to the twenty-two year old original. What made the old Total Recall special, i.e. the great make-up effects, the atmosphere of an alien planet and the director's sense of the right level of brutality, is reduced here to shootouts and chases in the middle of a future city. And while it works in the first half and the viewer can't even breathe under the flood of action, in the final part everything slowly fizzles out and the repetitive pattern becomes unpleasantly and profusely boring. Farrell tries hard, but, with all due respect, he’s no match for Arnie's stony gaze and swollen biceps, so the only positive additions are the beauties Jessica Biel and especially Kate Beckinsale, who apparently refuses to age and whose lithe body deserves its own star on the Walk of Fame. Wiseman once again proves that he can handle action, but, compared to Verhoeven, he’s a terribly unimaginative and routine director. (27/01/2013)

Why? Could anyone explain to me why anyone needs to do this? Why do actors have to get involved in such a film, why do they have to invest money in it at all and why do people have to go to the cinema to see it? Why does this movie have so many reviews on this site? I know, it’s a lot of questions for one movie that I absolutely did not want to see. But then the opportunity arose and I couldn’t resist. I must say that by today’s standards, it is a decent job. It buries the original film completely, but that’s a standard procedure in our CGI times. The whole thing is a bit simpler than the original film with Arnold, but probably so that today’s undemanding viewer would understand everything. But as I was saying. This film completely buries the idea behind the original movie, which was the last blockbuster without CGI, instead using manually prepared tricks, and which contained not only a message but had the balls to do something new and unique. The remake is just a cash-cow, where everything is made in a completely standard way. The creators might have gotten some money out of it, but for me it’s something that will be forgotten forever. What won’t be forgotten, however, is the fact that the 21st century Hollywood is afraid of making original movies, instead investing too much money into a brand that promises to return this investment, because they’ll always find some new fans who haven’t seen the original. Disgusting. I’m giving this three stars only because the film-making craft is objectively good. The rest, however… (03/08/2013)

The original didn't appeal to me in the slightest, so the reconciliatory three stars are a small victory for the new Total Recall. It's pleasing that they got rid of Mars and put more emphasis on the versatile wife, but unnecessary logical flaws and the slightly excessive running time are annoying. Len Wiseman saves a lot of things with the action (led by the premature climax of the movie in the form of a chase in elevators) and the reinvented Kate Beckinsale helps him out the most. And yet the courage of the producers to pour so many dollars into this particular vision defies comprehension. (12/09/2012)

I was expecting a much bigger disaster. In many aspects, I liked the new Total Recall more than the original. I'm not counting the “inflation difference” of the years, meaning that now, you can get much more sophisticated visual effects than before with high budgets. Overall, the film is surprisingly watchable. In terms of action scenes, Len Wiseman is getting better, more inventive, and more gripping with every film. There are moments in Total Recall where I couldn't even breathe, and that hasn't happened to me in a long time. Kate Beckinsale is excellent as a terminator, Colin Farrell is good, and the production design is fantastic. Some say it’s a rip-off of Minority Report and Blade Runner, but there aren't many other options for depicting the future realistically, or at least somewhat believable. Occasional inspiration, in my opinion, doesn't hurt, and if the audience picked on every little thing like this, soon every movie would be a disaster just because it starts, as I've seen the beginning of a movie many times, etc. With proper sound and good visuals, this film is worth seeing multiple times – even the slightly flawed screenplay encourages it. Just never have a steel tunnel through the Earth's core again, please. (19/08/2012)

I was expecting a new version of a Dick’s story, but what I got was an excruciatingly boring cover version of a great film. Aside from the good visual effects and the idea of dusting off the "good old" idea of displacing the inconvenient inhabitants of Great Britain to Australia, nothing in the new Total Recall impressed me at all. This bland story full of stupidities and clichés, which doesn't manage to do anything more imaginative than quoting from the original, is not even close to Verhoeven's bloody sci-fi anecdote. Colin Farrell is awkward, Bill Nighy underused, the female characters useless. Just like this whole movie. Perhaps one thing worked - watching it made me want to watch all the much better films it had ripped off again. (29/12/2012)