Review of Total Recall (2012) by Cinetyk — 09 Sep 2012

I'm not going to compare this to the original, but analyse it on its own. This movie is basically an action packed thriller in a sci-fi setting that's visually very good but done with little intelligence, if any at all. If you enjoy the "science" part of "science fiction" this is not for you, as the movie is riddled with problems in that department - the sci-fi is mainly just eye-candy. Additionaly, the main plot has good premises but disappoints because everything is explored in a such a shallow manner and things never take off from that superficial "all-action" approach.

Lets start with the sci-fi stuff. So, in the future, there was a biochemical war apocalypse that left everything but we know today as England and Australia inhabitable. Despite of this, in both areas there isn't any visual indication that something is wrong. How come only both these areas are habitable is never addressed, is there a crystal bubble around those areas? "England" is a sprawling technological metropolis spanning multiple levels high, with all the gadgets and visual candy you could dream. The "poor" "Australia" is reminiscent of "Bladerunner" with a hint of Hong Kong, but here, everything is glossy, sparkly and you can't see misery, filth, pollution, poverty, etc anywhere, not to mention technology is amazing and available everywhere too. "England" dominates economically and politically, alledgely enslaving "Australia", and there's an underground movement of rebels that want independence for "Australia". The real crazy part is that there is a tunnel through the Earth's core between both countries and common people travel in massive building-elevators in it... And gravity goes from normal to zero to reverse during the trip in a few minutes time... If you have a minimum knowledge of science you know this isn't possible (check links below if you're interested), you need only to remember the Earth's core is filled with molten metal at extremely high temperatures and pressures. There's lot of mistakes here and there, like for instance the elevator goes fast enough to make the trip in 17 mins, but not fast enough so that you can't blow out a window and ride outside while being chase by guards. I mean, one thing is to have a little Deus Ex Machina in sci-fi to keep things cool and/or futuristic, but they usually have a rooting in science, they're not just an excuse for spectacularity. They would have been better off if they had teleporters instead of this. Additionaly, despite the security being ultra heavy on the elevator stations, inside the elevador, the single most important device in that world, there's hardly any guard in the corridors and the main character infiltrates it with ease... Moving along to the plot, the main character (Colin Ferrel) is not content with his life despite having a nice home and a beautiful wife (Kate eckinsale). He wishes he was doing something more important than his job at a robot construction factory and has this recurring dream seemingly out of a spy movie (he's reading an Ian Fleming btw) where he and another beautiful woman (Jessica Biel) are trying to escape some sort of secure facility. The implications of what this dream might mean about his marriage are only just very lightly addressed. He eventually succumbs to his longing for more, and goes to Rekall, a company that promises to make your fantasies come true via chemically induced dreams indistuingishable from reality. However, the Rekall company is portrayed with very little mystique and despite there being some dangers to the mind in the process, these are only lightly hinted. He goes in for a session and ends up picking the "spy" package. Apparently before the program is initiated something goes wrong because the process doesn't work if the user has had previous experiences similar to those he's trying to "dream" about. Suddenly, apparentely he was a most-wanted spy, unbeknowst to him, and police and special forces storm the place after him, forcing him to kill a lot of them and run. Supposedly, the idea is that the audience (and the character) can't know if this is the "dream" or the reality, which would be a fantastic concept to explore throughout the movie, but it never is. Later on we realise why, and (without spoiling too much) it makes some sense, but it leaves a pungent feeling of a missed oportunity to explore those themes of what is a dream and what is reality. Instead, the movie goes in a rampage of action and action and it hardly ever stops to take a breath, never setting the tone that things may not be what they seem. That being said, it's true that the action is mostly good, and the visual effects very good. Some stuff is clearly exagerated, like Kate Beckinsale being as strong as a man and Colin Ferrel stronger than a robot...

Http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2012/08/13/the-science-of-total-recall/.

Http://youtu.