Take one memorable moment that sees Arnold Schwarzenegger, the muscle-bound star, hiding within the mechanical body of a middle-aged lady whose detachable head is then used as an explosive device. An earlier scene has Schwarzenegger yanking a tracking device from the depths of his nasal cavity, in spite of the fact that the bug is three times the size of his nostril. One supporting character is a man with a clairvoyant conjoined twin who protrudes from his brother’s belly like a young kangaroo poking out from its mother’s pouch. And then there’s that famous Martian prostitute, the one whose bountiful bosom boldly challenges that age-old saying, “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”
And now, in the summer of 2012, we have been given a needless, if perfectly harmless remake (from a studio named Original Films, no less), directed by “Underworld” helmer Len Wiseman. Fans will be pleased to know that this new-and-unimproved “Total Recall” boasts some of the more absurd elements of Verhoeven’s film, but this time they are notably tamer in presentation. For example, instead of encasing himself inside a human exoskeleton, leading man Colin Farrell disguises his appearance with a handy gizmo that projects a holographic image of another person’s head around his. The tracking device once lodged up Schwarzenegger’s nose is now in the inside of Farrell’s hand, removed with the aid of a shard of glass. As the presence of Martian mutants is done away with in this Earth-bound redo, the psychic Siamese twin is sadly nowhere to be seen. However, the triple-breasted hooker is here, even if the three amigos are held at bay by a thin leather strap. Oh how the nerds howl in disappointment.
It would be fair to say that Wiseman’s adaptation of Dick’s 1966 piece is much more of a straightforward chase movie than Verhoeven’s version — it’s much more slick and straight-faced than the goofily grotesque original. But to call the story of “Total Recall” straightforward would be misleading: by its very nature, it is narratively and thematically complex, playfully riding the fine line between fantasy and reality. And while this high-tech retread skips the head-scratching ambiguity of the 1990 film, it retains much of the conceptual intrigue of its classic source material. As any reader of his would know, a story plucked from the mind of Philip K. Dick is nothing if not intriguing.
Opening title-cards introduce the future world of Wiseman’s “Total Recall.” In the late-21st century, chemical warfare devastates our planet, rendering most of it uninhabitable. The human race is forced to live in two densely populated safe zones: the prosperous United Federation of Britain (UFB) and the oppressed Colony (formerly Australia). The designs of these areas call to mind the futuristic settings of two films also based on stories by Dick: the UFB, a towering cityscape circulated by fleeting hover-cars, is like the Washington, D.C. of Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” and the Colony, with its rain-soaked alleyways and bustling marketplaces, is like the Los Angeles of Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner.”
Our seemingly unlikely hero, Douglas Quaid (Farrell), is a citizen of the Colony. Discontented with his dead-end job tightening screws onto robot soldiers in a UFB factory (accessed through the Fall, a gravity elevator that travels straight through the Earth in 17 minutes flat), Quaid decides to pay a visit to his local Rekall centre. There, his mind can be implanted with fictitious — but wholly convincing — memories of any kind, at a hefty price. He opts for the super-spy package and is hooked up to a memory-implanting machine. Cue mass confusion as Quaid is held at gunpoint by a Rekall employee, accused of being a real spy, and watches in horror as the room is stormed by a SWAT team, all of whom Quaid instinctively guns down with the speed of Jason Bourne. But he’s just a factory worker! How’d he do that?
Quaid (“I’m a nobody!”) soon finds himself at the centre of an explosive battle between the tyrannical Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston, “Breaking Bad”) and enigmatic resistance leader Matthias (Bill Nighy, “Wrath of the Titans”). His loving wife of seven years, Lori (Kate Beckinsale, wife of Wiseman), suddenly drops her American accent in favour of a much more sinister British accent and reveals herself to be an undercover agent working for Cohaagen. Just as bewildered as we are, Quaid goes on the run, joined by the woman of his dreams (literally), resistance member and former lover Melina (Jessica Biel, “New Year’s Eve”), while Doug’s (ex-)wife determinedly hunts them down like the T-1000.
Closely following each and every plot beat of Verhoeven’s film, Wiseman’s “Total Recall” frequently induces a feeling of deja vu. What sets the two apart, aside from the lack of appearances from a certain red planet, is that Wiseman’s film plays out much more like a series of high-octane chase sequences, which does have its merits: as he showed in “Die Hard 4.0," Wiseman is a capable director of action, and the many scenes predominantly featuring running and shooting and leaping and punching are all rather exciting. One heart-racing highlight of the film is a breakneck hover-car chase during which Quaid, in a tight spot, shuts off his vehicle’s magnetic suspension feature, sending the car plummeting down towards the ground hundreds of feet below.
And then there’s a climactic brawl fought inside (and outside) the Fall, with Quaid and Melina taking advantage of the shift in gravity once the lift tunnels its way to the Earth’s core. But by this stage, we’ve grown a little weary of all this running and shooting and leaping and punching. Hungry, we yearn for something more, something to really sink our teeth into. We do have Farrell, inarguably a superior actor to Schwarzenegger but perhaps not as bold a presence, and we can relish the richly detailed production design that brings the film’s future world to vibrant, spectacular life. What’s missing is a sense of humour and a political/social satire that really hits home, both key elements in the success of the 1990 film.
Without either of these, any remake of Verhoeven’s nigh-unbeatable sci-fi curiosity is guaranteed to seem a little lacklustre by sheer, almost unfair comparison. Wiseman’s certainly does, but its high-speed action, relentless pace and well-realised dystopian backdrop save it from tumbling into the cinematic abyss recently occupied by such dismal genre redos as “The Thing,” “The Wolf Man” and “Straw Dogs.” Arriving in theatres next year is a remake of another Verhoeven film, “Robocop,” and a remake of his “Starship Troopers” is also in the works. One hopes both projects will at the very least have the decency to be as efficiently diverting as Wiseman’s “Total Recall" and maybe have a bit of a sense of humour about themselves.
6/10
Hope this is better than the review score you have given it - surely not another arnie remake that just isn't upto scratch. The original Total Recall, (and that goes for Conan as well) was one of my all time favourites
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