For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - Total Recall
The Impression:
Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall is a film that works as
an artifact of a certain time and place. Arnold was huge,
sweaty tough-guy action films were huger, and Carolco
Pictures knew that regardless of Verhoeven’s
stranger-than-normal touch, the film had potential. Total
Recall today is just another smear in the long line of
boring sci-fi action flicks that have been shat in to the
theaters. Oh boy, another remake.
The Reality:
I’ll be perfectly honest: I fell asleep about twenty-five
minutes in to Total Recall and woke up in the midst
of Colin Farrell fighting robots in zero-gravity. Discount
my opinion now if that bothers you, but I’m pretty sure the
a third of the film I was privy to, spoke volumes about what
I missed. Which, to continue my honesty streak, wasn’t much.
There was a lot of Hollywood rigmarole when the remake was
first announced that the original Philip K. Dick story the
film was based on was going to be inspiration for the new
film but as per usual with unwanted remakes, this idea was
clearly a smoke screen so that the supremely blasé Len
Wiseman could crank out another generic action film with
some sort of high-concept hook. From what I understand from
my brief experience with the film, Colin Farrell plays
Douglas Quaid, a factory shmuck who literally dreams of a
different life and when he approaches a controversial memory
builder a lot more than he asked for comes bubbling to the
surface. Kate Beckinsale plays a one-liner spitting assassin
who chases Quaid and a cardboard cut-out "hot revolutionary"
played by Jessica Biel for literally the entire film (or at
least it seemed that way). Things explode and then more
things explode and I think Bill Nighy might have popped up a
few times, but the impression that I got was that this was
just another remake pumped out for the sake of lining the
pockets of all involved.
The Lesson:
Sleep is a god-send sometimes.
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