It’s difficult getting the balance right when you approach a remake. You need to offer the audience enough nostalgic hooks, entertainment value and enough reinterpretation to justify recycling a movie title. Unfortunately, the new Total Recall doesn’t work as a tribute, only sells eye candy and delivers a patchwork refresh to a superior film that still holds up today.

Instead of being set on Mars, the new Total Recall is based in an over-populated world, where an underground transporter known as The Fall connects the great divide via the Earth’s core. There’s a more serious tone to all the action without Arnie’s cheesy one-liners and the film-makers have soaked up all the violence to create a virtually blood-free sci-fi adventure. Key characters have been fused or diluted and there’s almost no alien life at all. Without the Total Rekall chair, the rebel leader subplot and the unholy matrimony, this film wouldn’t have any connection to Total Recall other than it’s title.

Colin Farrell stars as the lead after a number of so-so supporting performances. The casting decision may have been spurred on by his supporting role in Minority Report, another Philip K. Dick short story adaptation. He’s no Tom Cruise or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but manages to carry the film with help from his two leading ladies, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel.

Kate Beckinsale is probably best known for her skin tight cat suit in Underworld and picks up where she left off, trading hot vampire action for hot pursuit action. She makes a kick-ass femme fatale as she undertakes a dual substitute for Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside as ‘the wife’. She’s a bitchy bounty hunter and a nice counterbalance to a pensive Farrell. Jessica Biel looks similar to Beckinsale and plays an old flame, completing a love/hate triangle as the romantic interest and precious cargo.

“It is a gun… and I’m not happy to see you.”

Len Wiseman directed Underworld, and casting Kate Beckinsale and Bill Nighy is a bit of a total recall on its own. There’s a strong slant to the sleek urban action of Underworld with a rooftop chase scene drawing from this undercurrent. It’s actually quite surprising that Milla Jovovich isn’t in this film, considering that screenwriter Kurt Wimmers seems obsessed with writing vehicles for the actress. Nevertheless, the final act’s clinical, futuristic sets and progression have parallels with a classic Resident Evil Umbrella Corp. invasion.

Phillip K. Dick’s science-fiction writings inspired Blade Runner and Minority Report, so you can understand the spill-over into Total Recall. Although, they’ve milked the cross-nationality monoculture, cluttered urban environment and New Tokyo feel from Blade Runner and the vehicles and technology design could have been lifted directly from the production design of Minority Report. To add to the mix of science-fiction “influences”, the robotic police officers are a clash of films like Robocop and I, Robot. Some positives are the absence of overt product placement and the creativity around the use of “handheld” communication.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a one-man movie army when he signed on to star in Total Recall with Robocop director, Paul Verhoeven and Alien screenwriters, Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon. Everyone except David Cronenberg had already notched up another point to Arnie before the film even started production and while not perfect, the visual effects still hold up today. The original Total Recall was simply a product of its ingredients and delivered a violent, yet satisfying mix of dark sci-fi comic book action.

Unfortunately for the new Total Recall, it’s style over substance as green screen eye candy and a good-looking cast propels the story… delivering a dazzling yet mind-numbing science-fiction action remake with strong influences from Minority Report, Blade Runner, Underworld, Resident Evil and I, Robot, with a few throwbacks to the 1990 Schwarzenegger original. Surely, a more appropriate title would’ve been “Total Rehash” as the setting, characters and action have been churned out without much original thought and an over-reliance on CGI.

The bottom line: Rehash

Release Date: 31 August, 2012
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