Review of Total Recall (2012) by Darsidius — 26 Nov 2012

I finally saw this movie, and am a little disappointed. Having seen the 1990 version of this movie, I knew that there would be changes (a reboot) to the original in this outing, and figured that I would give this movie the benefit of being able to stand on it's own.

To start, the entire setting of the movie seems off, almost as though the director decided to mesh Blade Runner with the video game Mass Effect. In fact, the synthetic security force is a complete rip-off from the video game, to name only one.

It's hard to write this review without picking the movie apart, and the stigma of the first movie will always be there as a critique because this movie modelled itself completely after it. It's not really a complete reboot, but it's as though someone with a better budget and technology decided to make a visually stunning film with the story of Total Recall kind of spliced into it.

Things, like the three breasted woman or the fat-woman disguise, made a cameo in this film, but they were very out of place. There was a great suspension of reality in several parts of the film, but I guess in the future, people crash through windows, survive gunshot wounds without treatment, and climb ladders on trains going 500 mph through the Earth's core everyday.

At times, the fight scenes and the constant chase scenes can become very tedious and boring, and the story appears to fall on the back burner to move these scenes along. There were very few memorable characters in this reboot, unlike the original movie which had more acting and less scowling from the actors and actresses; in fact, I had a hard time keeping up with Jessica Biel's and Kate Beckinsale's characters because they looked similar to each other, and their characters weren't exactly fleshed out very well.

Having seen it, I can't recommend this movie to anyone just yet. I admit that I've watched it once, and that sometimes a different frame of mind may change one's interest in watching a movie. But this movie seems to lack something that you can't really put your finger on, and the design choices, once you've seen them elsewhere, are distracting and dislikeable.

Do yourself a favor and see the 1990 version first, if you haven't, then youtube Mass Effect 2's videos after watching Blade Runner before you watchi this movie, and you'll see what I mean.