Movie Review #2 Total Recall (2012)

Hi,

My second review is Total Recall, starting Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Bryan Cranston. While I knew many people who thought this film was going to be awful, I had higher hopes since I tend to enjoy visions of the future portrayed in film. I had never seen the Arnold 1990's version, so I had pretty much a blank slate.

Douglas Quaid, Colin Farrell, is an assembly line worker in the future where most of the planet has been destroyed by chemical warfare and only England and Australia (the colony) survive. He is bored with his life and has a recurring nightmare so goes to "Rekall" to gain more interesting memories. As we know from the trailer something goes wrong - cops come - and he miraculously disposes of them quite easily.

He then finds his way back to his apartment and consoles in his wife, Kate Beckinsale, who turns out to be an operative of the dominate GB government and tries to choke him out - which he of course escapes. The rest of the film is basically Beckinsale trying to kill or capture Farrell and Farrell fighting with ninja like precision a la Jason Bourne.

The majority of this film is action, and boy does it get boring. Action sequence after action sequence with very little plot in-between.  Director Len Wisemen should have taken another look at "Minority Report" to see how a futuristic thriller is done.

The little plot that exists is this: there is a generic resistance movement who the government led by Cohaagen, Bryan Cranston, wants to crush using robots. While Quaid doesn't know really who he is, he does find out that somewhere in his memories is a way to stop the robots and save "the colony." Jessica Biel comes along for the ride as the love interest/confidant and together they eventually win ....of course. Frequently the audience has to guess if what is going on is real or really just in Quaid's mind but at this point this kind of trickery is cliche.

The acting was quite bland and unmemorable. It seems like all the parts are just stock characters including the guy with amnesia, the women that tries to help him remember, the bad guy, and the bitch. I wish Cranston would have been given more time in the film and more control over the character he is in about 20 minuets max and isn't given enough to do. I was looking forward to this one and I should have listened to those who said it was going to suck, it did.

That_Guy

1/4 Killer Robots.