Total Recall

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 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. (30/12/2012)

I had forgotten Wimmer's name in the screenwriter column and went into it with no greater ambitions, but also without any fear. So as long as Wiseman reminisces about his childhood spent at arcades, it goes pretty well, although Colin doesn't really enjoy it and Jessica definitely doesn't. The entire film is carried by Paul Cameron's circling camera and Kate Beckinsale enjoying her unacknowledged role as the Terminator. However, it gets worse with each new dialogue that you just can't get out, even if you had half a kilo of coke shoved into your head in Recall, so I found myself smiling at times, even though the creators didn't intend for that to be the case. For a hundred and twenty-five million, it’s a pretty decent ride, but it should have taken at least half an hour less. (31/03/2013)

The visually arresting first half will tickle the heart of any sci-fi fan. And it doesn't matter that the Asian architecture, the perpetual rain and parakeets are a rip-off of Blade Runner, and the chases with hoverboards are a rip-off of Minority Report. But then, as the minutes tick by, the film makes it clear that the script was written by the infamous Kurt Wimmer, a man with no talent and no creative intelligence, so the mounting annoying clichés and situations like those from the most subpar B-movies quickly cool down the initial enthusiasm. Where the old Total Recall clearly wiped its ass with clichéd Hollywood and was engaging in its ambiguous answer to what is truth and what is a dream, Wiseman's film is dull and woefully predictable. It's like Kate Beckinsale's "terminator" character: visually appealing and energetic, but bluntly direct. (18/08/2012)

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)