Total Recall Review

by A.J.

The irony of this year’s Total Recall being produced by a company called Original Film is not lost on me. The 1990 version of the film, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by Paul Verhoeven, and the 2012 version are based on a Phillip K. Dick short story called We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. The story concerns a clerk, bored with his life, who goes to a company to get the memory of an exciting trip to Mars implanted in his memory. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is concise, explanation heavy, and has a twist ending like an old Twilight Zone episode.

In a moment of audience participation with the confused main character Quaid, you get the distinct feeling that you’ve seen this movie before, even if you haven't seen the original. Each film version  has its own idea of how to expand on the short story, unfortunately 2012’s Total Recall seems to be so concerned with not being influenced by the original that, except for some winks and nods, it mostly borrows from every other sci-fi and action movie from the past 30 years: floating cars from The Fifth Element, fighting style from The Bourne Identity, cityscapes of Blade Runner and Minority Report, a weightless action scene from Inception, even a little bit of The Matrix.

The biggest difference between the two films is that this one does not go to Mars. Mars is mentioned in passing (one of those winks). In the world of this Total Recall, the earth has been scorched by chemical warfare and the only inhabitable locations are The Colony (Australia) and the United Federation of Britain (Britain… I think, the movie isn’t too good about distinguishing location despite showing us a map at the beginning). Colin Farrell plays Quaid, an assembly line worker who longs for something more than his life of routine. He, like most of the public in this movie, commutes from The Colony to UFB via an elevator through the center of the earth. This tunnel is demonized by a rebel organization as a symbol of the oppression of The Colony under Britain led by Chancellor Cohaagen.

After a trip to the fake memory company, Rekall, which here is like a seedy opium den but was a respectable business in the earlier film, Quaid finds himself being pursued by robot police machines and his wife who is really a government agent. But maybe this is all just part of the memory adventure he bought from Rekall? This movie doesn’t seem too concerned with that question. It doesn’t seemed too concerned with anything other than sci-fi action, which is in itself pretty good. But why should I care? Quaid’s resistance contact played by Jessica Biel doesn’t seem too concerned about Quaid and neither does anyone else except for his wife (Kate Beckinsale) who has the singular goal of killing him. In the original, Quaid was easy to sympathize with and feel for; so many characters cared about him. Even Cohaagen cared about Quaid since they were friends before Quaid joined the resistance and he hoped they could be friends again.

It’s hard not to compare a remake to the original, and that’s not how you should critique a movie. But it’s especially hard not to when the original was so good at what is set out to do and holds up very well. In the 1990 movie, the Earth scenes were shot in Mexico City, the time was the discernible near future where there were TV screens in your wall, full body X-rays at public transportation hubs, video phones everywhere, TV ads on the subway… you get the drift. The future-scape of the new version is CGI, of course, but it is also such a “standard” vision of the future that it is forgettable and dull. Everything in the future is shades of gray and other dark, muted colors. With the original you could read the plot anyway you wanted and it worked: whether you thought it was all real, or just a dream Quaid purchased. The 1990 Total Recall was a thrilling adventure. The new one is an unrelenting chase, and when it is over not much different than before. Think for a moment and ask yourself, which would you rather pay for?