Total Recall (2012)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

From my favorite movies..

Total Recall (Remake) Review 2/5How did they manage to mess up a remake of Total Recall? They have all the state of the art special effects and everything else yet they managed to make a boring pile of generic rubbish. It's full of watered down wonky edited fight scenes, dull characters and a half baked plot. The first film was very entertaining with exciting action scenes, twists and an interesting setting. The only draw back is it looked dated even back then. With the remake they had the chance to make it look incredible.They changed it drastically. Not to say change is bad but they changed it for the worse. The film was set on Earth instead of Mars and the henchmen were replaced with robotic androids. All in all its just a boring chase thriller with no excitement and zero character development. The music score by Marco Beltrami is not even memorable (It doesn't come close to Jerry Goldsmiths score) It references a lot the stuff from the original film but it just comes across as a desperate attempt to draw the fans in. Colin Farrell just looks bored throughout, Bryan Cranston is bland as the villain and Kate Beckinsale is just annoying as his ex-wife. The original film was an ultraviolet gore fest but this is just a 12A watered down bore fest. Although the cinematography looks good it just looks like a rip off of superior films like Blade Runner and Minority Report.

Set in a world where much of the Earth has been contaminated only two areas remain inhabitable; United Federation of Britain (Great Britain and Western Europe) and The Colony (Australia). These are linked by The Fall, a giant gravity elevator that passes through the Earth's core, which enables workers to travel from the Colony to the UFB to work. There are political troubles with groups in the colony fighting for better conditions.One such colonial worker is Douglas Quaid, he is married to a member of the UFB security forces and has recurrent dreams about being a secret agent. After some time he goes to Rekall, a company that gives you memories of an amazing adventure without actually having that adventure... Quaid opts for the Secret Agent Package. Immediately it seems as if something is very wrong as police storm the building and Quaid easily dispatches them. He flees and gets home, where his wife tells him his whole life was a lie before trying to kill him. He manages to escape again and is rescued by Melina, the woman from his dreams. Following leads he learns more about who he is, Quaid and Melina set out to find resistance leader Matthias.Having really enjoyed the original 'Total Recall' I was a little wary about this version... a major concern being that the first was a violent 18 certificate film but this was a teen friendly 12. As it turned out this was still quite violent and possibly includes more action... this action rarely stops once the story gets going. This means it is easy to overlook flaws as we are quickly onto the next action set-piece. The story isn't too complicated although there are some decent twists, if you haven't seen the original of course. The best thing about this version is that it doesn't slavishly copy the original; there are however some nice nods to it. Colin Farrell impresses as Quaid... he may not be as physically imposing as Arnie but is more believable as a secret agent for that very reason. The rest of the cast are solid enough although Bryan Cranston was somewhat underused as Chancellor Vilos Cohaagen, the oppressive leader of the UFB. Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel a good as Quaid's wife and Melina respectively. The special effects were really impressive; they created a believable dystopian world with some amazing technology. Overall I'd say this was much better than I expected although if I were to recommend just one version of 'Total Recall' it would be the original... perhaps for nostalgic reasons as much as anything else.

Before i start this review i must say i never knew about the 1990 original before watching this version & i do not wish to watch the original as I personally struggle to watch old films due to resolution... So this review is based on me only watching the modern 2012 version :) I found this movie by rummaging around in Poundland's Blu-Ray section, saw the front cover with some guy in a like a head-set type thing, thought it could be to do with the future / Sci-Fi, read the back bio & boom, here i am reviewing a awesome £1 Blu-Ray movie. Okay so I'm a sucker for anything Sci-Fi / Future type movies, the CGI in this movie is top notch, its looks clean, smart & real. When starting to watch the movie & realise it was almost 2 hours long (Extended Cut) i almost knew it would be good! The film is set in the future where chemical warfare has left most of the world uninhabitable & only 2 "areas" are safe, one in Britain & the other in Australia, the only way to get to either is through a train like thing straight through the middle of the earth. The film starts off with good decent action so it doesn't bore you with loads of story before hand, speaking of the story & plot it was very easy to understand & follow which was easy on the mind while watching. Through a lot of the film there is quite a bit of action which the scenes are decent & well played & acted. I grew to like the main good side characters & hate the bad side, the actors where good, they all suited their role & clothing was well thought out to, not to mention the awesome future / Sci-Fi robots police that looked awesome. Bad points; I'm not sure of any of the top of my head, I didn't have any complaints about the story, or what happened then or where etc. I felt like i was informed of everything that i needed to know. You may all be reading this thinking am i mad, this movie is rubbish, nope i loved it. Overall I understood what was going on, it didn't feel like 2 hours & i wanted more, great acting, awesome future / Sci-Fi setting! 9 / 10

I have never seen the original, and so I did't go into this movie with any feelings of what it should be. And I'll admit that a lot of the characters seem a little artificial, and the development is not all that great. And since I am not really a huge fan of the action genre, this could have put me off. But the pacing was perfect, and the graphics were something else entirely. It really is a perfect action movie. I mean, the scenes involving multi-tier cities, and falling through the earth blew my mind. The robots were awesome.