Watching the Total Recall remake proves about as inspiring as a trip to Costco. Every now and then something shiny and new catches your eye, but mostly you’re just eyeballing stuff you’ve seen a hundred times before.
The credits say the movie was “inspired by” Paul Verhoeven’s campy 1990 movie of the same name, which in turn was based loosely on the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.” It’s like director Len Wiseman took Dick’s title to heart for his remake: If you’ve seen the original Total Recall, or any other sci-fi films from the past two decades, this cinematic stroll down memory lane won’t get you thinking anything aside from, “Where have I seen this before?”
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)
The PG-13 movie, which opens Friday, frames up its scenario quickly: It’s 2084, and biochemical warfare has left most of Earth uninhabitable. Humans live in two territories — the United Federation of Britain (today’s United Kingdom) and The Colony (Australia). Blue-collar grunts from Down Under commute to the UFB using The Fall, a miraculous transport system that carries them through the Earth’s core and to the other side of the planet in 17 minutes or so (although it never looks like it’s moving all that quickly for some strange reason).
Kate Beckinsale spends most of Total Recall in relentless pursuit mode.
Yearning for some escapist relief from his dead-end job, a subterranean commuter named Quaid (played by Colin Farrell) finds himself drawn to a shadowy operation called Rekall. The firm advertises virtual vacations that will leave your brain filled with fantastic fake memories. What could go wrong?
After Quaid opts for the spy package, everything goes wrong. He finds himself running from police in riot gear, questioning every detail of his “real” life and unraveling a conspiracy in which he seems to be a key player. All the “was it a dream?” mumbo-jumbo that seemed so twisty and exciting two decades ago just feels like a rehash at this point, what with Inception having recently taken that kind of sci-fi brain-bending to its artful extreme.
Instead of a brain-bending blast of sci-fi fun, we’re left with a total retread. The race to recover hidden items, the videotaped messages from the past, the drone army, the lens flares, the silly subversive slogans on city walls — it’s one slick-looking flashback to other, better movies, all sandwiched between frenetic action scenes.
The story seems so rote, and the characters so soulless, that it’s almost impossible to give half a crap about Quaid as he tangles with his cunning wife Lori (a rather relentless Kate Beckinsale) and reconnects with his dream girl from the past, a resistance fighter named Melina (Jessica Biel).
Beckinsale kicks a fair amount of ass in the film even though her colleagues on the police force shoot like stormtroopers. But Farrell’s flat performance makes it hard to care whether the endless sprays of automatic gunfire ever hit home. I’ll take Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hammy original take on the Quaid character any day, but probably no actor could utter this script’s clunky one-liners and come away unscathed.
Quaid (Colin Farrell, left) and Melina (Jessica Biel) run and gun for their lives in the thoroughly unnecessary remake.
Photos: Michael Gibson/Columbia PicturesDon’t be suckered in by the promise of actor Bryan Cranston, who oozes conviction in Breaking Bad, playing the role of Total Recall villain Cohaagen. The amazing television actor’s talents are wasted in this paper-thin role, and the climactic confrontation between Quaid and Cohaagen in the resistance’s home base unleashes some laughably ludicrous onscreen hacker action, setting the stage for all the story scraps to get hastily stuffed into a predictable and dull finale.
Even Bryan Cranston breaking bad as Cohaagen can’t redeem Total Recall.
The one place director Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard, the Underworld films) clearly excels is the action. There’s plenty of it here — just like when they put out the sausage samples at Costco — and the movie’s inventive chase scenes actually do bring something fresh to the mix.
There’s a tremendous use of vertical space during these sequences as the characters, whether on foot or in flying cars, tear through futuristic cityscapes. Energetic yet easy to follow, the chases unfold almost like a platformer come to life.
There’s more eye candy, too. The rainy, Asian-influenced look of The Colony recalls Blade Runner‘s noir nightmare. And a few bits of gee-whiz visual design — an unusual cellphone, a cool new gun, a couple of twists on sci-fi cinema’s now-ubiquitous swipeable see-through displays — will grab your attention.
But action-packed chases and a handful of Minority Report moments do not a great movie make. Neither does layering on a little War on Terror propaganda and class revolt just to add a patina of modern urgency.
Maybe Wiseman’s Total Recall wouldn’t feel so superficial if the original film hadn’t made such an indelible impression with its topsy-turvy tone, Schwarzenegger’s bugged-out eyes and the big Kuato reveal. But in the shadow of Verhoeven’s cult classic, even the remake’s nods to the original (yes, there’s a three-breasted mutant) feel forced and lame.
If you’ve never seen the original, or even if you have, do yourself a favor and skip the remake. Queue up the 1990 version to refresh your memory about how much fun a sci-fi flick can be.
WIRED Electric lasso guns; cops’ all-seeing spy device; ultimate mobile phone; zero-G shootout.
TIRED Dreadlocked resistance fighters; unnecessary remakes.
Rating: 
