Doubtlessly, a truly great noir-tinted science-fiction film will one day be created from the raw materials of Philip K. Dick's 1966 short story, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.” In 1990, Arnold Schwarzenegger successfully shepherded a film adaptation of the tale out of Development Hell with the assistance of now-defunct Carolco Pictures and Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. The result was Total Recall, a garish, blood-spattered, distinctly “Verhoeven-ian” film: a giddily naughty blob of trash-art that could only have emerged at that exact moment in the history of the Hollywood blockbuster. (There is something about the presence of Scharzenegger, Sharon Stone, and Verhoeven heavies such as Ronnie Cox and Michael Ironside together in an ultra-violent big-budget science-fiction film that screams 1990.) However, Total Recall is likely best remembered for the striking work of visual effects maestro Rob Bottin, whose outlandish, anything-goes approach marked the last, triumphant gasp of practical effects-driven blockbusters. As memorable as 1990's Recall might be, it is unquestionably a Bad Movie, albeit one that proudly claims the mantle.
Fans hoping for a more serious-minded and probative cinematic version of “Wholesale” that can stand alongside worthier cinematic Dick adaptations such as Blade Runner and Minority Report will be sorely disappointed in the new Total Recall. Helming this remake—and it is self-evidently a remake of the 1990 film rather than a re-adaptation of the short story—is Len Wiseman, the American director behind the fourth installment in the Die Hard franchise, as well as the ludicrous, leaden, and inexplicably still-breathing Underworld series. Wiseman plainly wants the viewer to associate this new Total Recall with gritty science-fiction films of years past, and to this end production designer Patrick Tatopoulos cribs heavily from, well, Blade Runner and Minority Report (as well as his own work on I, Robot). The result is a work that feels visually continuous with those films' vision of a crushing, screen-choked future dystopia, but is otherwise unremarkable and sleepy, even when objects are whizzing past at hundreds of miles an hour.
Wiseman's version of the tale sees Colin Farrell assuming the role of Douglas Quaid, a late 21st-century working stiff, who visits memory-implantation firm Rekall in order to inject some excitement into his humdrum life. Things go... badly, and suddenly government soldiers are hunting him, his wife (Kate Beckinsale) is attempting to choke the life out of him, and a mysterious, dream-girl revolutionary (Jessica Biel) crosses his path. It's challenging to say what exactly goes wrong in Total Recall. Other than some clunky references to the Schwarzenegger film, there's little that's outright unpleasant, and as science-fiction action flicks go, it's a benign and straightforward serving of chases, explosions, and eye-catching speculative technology. In a summer where blockbusters such as Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises wobbled underneath a burden of narrative convolutions, there's something oddly refreshing about Total Recall's slack simplicity. However, Wiseman and an army of screenwriters do almost nothing to distinguish their film from countless other anonymous actioners that have long receded from memory, and Total Recall seems bound for the same fate. Lacking even one compelling performance or any meaningful drama to propel the story from one scene to the next, Wiseman's film is a digital shell filled with motion blur. It's inoffensive, but devoid of substance or delight.
