Total Recall (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

I'm not sure if it's significant that my wife and I didn't discuss this film at all when we walked out of the cinema. She was very tired and it was a reasonably late showing for us but we would normally have at least asked each other whether we liked it. That initial reaction you have walking out of a cinema is often the most honest, no matter how long you mull things over later but I think if I had been asked at the time I would have had difficulty responding.

I knew I was always going to have trouble with this film being a fan of the original, but I can't honestly say that it's turned out horribly. The design of this messed-up future earth was astonishing and managed to induce that slight shudder of vertigo on numerous occasions. As implausible as it may be to have a lift that can travel through the core of the Earth in around 17 minutes (requiring an average speed of around 28,000 miles per hour), it was executed very well. Weirdly it felt like Mass Effect was one of its biggest design influences, especially when it came to its armoured robots. I felt that it was pretty lazy having no British or Australian accents given they were supposed to be the main world powers but I can let that slide too. I was just left feeling that it was a bit of a waste to go to all of this effort and then tell the exact same story as the original, I would much rather have seen something else set in that same world.

I also can't deny that there were some good action sequences in this, which varied between the unbelievable and more grounded, well thought out sequences that took note of the surroundings and allowed the viewer to follow them through. For example I liked Kate Beckinsale's slide towards a descending lift in the hope of making it through the door, only to miss it but still land in the lift due to the top previously being ripped off. In a sense both the original and this are good examples of a typical action blockbuster of their day but no matter how well this version does in some areas, the original is just so much more interesting because of two areas in particular that this film just doesn't seem to get.

Firstly, it misses out on any kind of proof that Hauser/Quaid (Colin Farrell) was originally a bad guy. The video message left to himself by Arnie in the original made it very clear that his old self was very different. Without something like this I think it detracts from the idea of how we define our own identity and whether our past has any bearing on what we do in the future. Here Brian Cranston's Cohagen might just as well have been lying to Quaid to mess with him, there was no real confirmation that there was any point to it.

I felt that without this to focus on, you start to see more plotholes creep in - why did they go to this much trouble? Why didn't they just capture an actual resistance fighter and implant the fake kill switch information in his head? And just how did doing this help them track him down again once he went to the resistance? Why were they annoyed he'd gone to Rekall and started this whole process when that was what they wanted to happen anyway? All criticisms that could be levelled at the original film too but they don't seem to stand out as much and can also be explained if you take a particular view of the original...

That being the idea that it was actually all in his head and he never made it out of Rekall. Here I felt there was no real ambiguity over whether it was in his head or not, other than some lazy tacked on echoed phrases and a wistful look at a Rekall sign at the end. By opening with a very clear dream as a memory, it really feels like there is no doubt that these are real repressed memories in this version. There are also few cuts in the Rekall sequence that could make the audience believe they have missed something, it seemed very clear to me that the Rekall team had not yet done anything to affect his mind at all.

The genius of the original version is that every single action ties into the idea that it's all in his head. Arnies dreams for example are not of former events but a nightmare about dying from a lack of oxygen (in a very unrealistic manner). He has never actually experienced this and that dream goes on to form the climax of the film. Discovering this theory makes watching the original again a very rewarding experience but here there is not really anything clever that would be enhanced by a repeat viewing.

All of this added up to a film that I felt like I'd totally checked out from by the end. When Quaid escapes from the guards and manages to land on 'The Fall' unopposed I should have been ranting about its lack of logic but I just couldn't force myself to care. Having a final fist fight with Cohagen at the end also felt really out of place as he had done nothing to suggest he could even last 30 seconds against Quaid throughout the rest of the film. When this film was first announced sources suggested that it was going to be a re-interpretation of the original Philip K. Dick short story 'We can remember it for you wholesale'. As implausible as that sounds if you've read that very short, jokey story, it would still have been preferable to see something crazy and different than the bland retread we ended up with.