So I am kicking off "Thrill's Movie Reviews" with the first
movie of August, Total Recall. Although the movie is a remake of the 1990 film of the same name starring 'The Governator,' this review will be based only on the film itself
and not on its accuracy to the original film or the short story both
the remake and the original are based off of; "We Can Remember It for You
Wholesale" by Philip Dick.
I have to say that my friend and I thought this movie was simply a knockoff Inception like movie because all the trailers showed the main character, played by Colin Farrell, getting into a machine that creates an artificial reality and afterword is immediately ambushed by police officers. We believed at first glance that the big twist, the "is the top gonna fall" moment, would be that the movie would end with Colin's character getting out of the machine and we find out that the entire movie was a hallucination created by the "Rekall" machine. But as a movie lover, I needed to see the movie anyway.
(And now for a quick somewhat spoiler free plot summery courtesy of wiki.) The movie opens by explaining that near the end of the 21st century after being devastated by nuclear war, Earth is divided into two superpowers, United Federation of Britain (UFB) and The Colony (formerly Oceania), who are locked in a battle for supremacy to unify the world.(While the UFB appears to be a seemingly normal government and country, minus a population problem, the Colony is a mix of China town and the futuristic city of Coruscant from the Star Wars series). In this world lives Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell), a factory worker suffering from violent nightmares. Dissatisfied with lowly existence, Quaid visits 'Rekall', a corporation that provides its clients with implanted artificial memories of the lives they would like to have. A 'Rekall' representative, finds that Quaid was actually a secret agent thus stops implanting him the memory about an adventure of a secret agent. Armed SWAT team shoot and kill all of the ‘Rekall’ employees before Quaid kills all of them. He returns home to his wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale) who, after trying to kill him, reveals that she's really a secret agent and not really his wife. Now he is on the run and he joins forces with a resistance agent named Melina (Jessica Biel) while he tries to unravel the secrets of his own mind while fighting the UFB Special Forces led by Prime Minister Vilos Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston).
The highlight of the movie is the excellent cast since they do an excellent job of truly immersing you in this crazy post-apocalyptic universe. Farrell does a good job of acting the clichéd role of secret agent who lost all of his memories only to have them come back at a terrible time while Biel does a good job of playing the resistance agent who wants to save Doug for both the resistance and herself. Unfortunately the cast is the only good quality the movie has. The plot is very predictable and clichéd and left me correctly predicting almost every event from the opening scene to the closing credits. The clichés go from Doug fighting some of the robot cops he was previously making to Doug's memories appearing to be the key to helping the Resistance beat the UFB. The movie's big twists and turns would have been surprising two decades ago but today result in a plot that seems to be made from the story lines of the latest science fiction movies and video games from the past decade. Another problem the movie has is the oxymoron-ic nature of the police in this reality as they are very easily beaten by Doug and Melina. The car chase scene that was shown off in the multiple trailers is very reminiscent of the car chase scene from Minority Report. The difference between the two is in Minority Report's universe, the police have the technology to deactivate Tom Cruse's car and have it return to the police station. One would think that the police, in the year 2083, would at least have the technology to deactivate the super high tech hover car and not have to resort to making a road block; a road block that Doug and Melina easily avoid (spoiler alert, sorry). This 'dumb' police really takes away from the entirety of the movie and makes you think why they can do things they should.
All in all, this movie is good but
very predictable and in this day in age with movie ticket prices up to 12-15
dollars, this is one to wait and catch on HBO in the winter.
Extra note....this movie does makes me want to go watch the original and/or read the short story that inspired both films. Apparently the original has a trip to Mars and it makes me think why I didn't see space travel in this one. Oh well....
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