Review of Total Recall (2012) by Stifler W — 02 May 2014

While I was watching this I couldn't help but ask myself what's happened to the action heroes. The 1980's which gave us the original Total Recall, also gave us non stop action heroes. Arnold Schwarzenger being the most iconic, but we also got Segal, Van Damme, and Stallone.

We really don't have names like that anymore. Perhaps the closest thing to an action hero these days is Hugh Jackman. With the emphasis being so much on super heroes I think we've lost an entire genre of movie - that being the action movie.

The reception for this version of Total Recall was less than stellar - critics liked it at a rate of 30% and among normal movie goers it was only marginally better at 47%. It's true that there may be a lot of reasons for this - an over reliance on the set, extravagant action scenes that detract from the story line, a completely different story line than the original , and Colin Farrell is a bit of a weird choice to play Quaid.

But ultimately could it simply be that this movie belongs to a different generation of movies. Might I suggest that the original without Schwarzenger would have been just as bad, but we put up with the original because we liked Arnold.

I'd agree that this movie is all flash and eventually all the pyrotechnics let you down in the end. Ultimately these remakes of 80's action classics need to be led by a different kind of actor - an actor that currently doesn't exist in Hollywood.

This will change eventually because what is old will soon enough become new again - it'll just be interesting to see who ultimately takes the place of the best Austrian action hero in Hollywood history - but when we find out movies like this will suddenly not seem so bad.