Total Recall (2012)
Country: US/CAN
Technical: col/2.35:1 118m
Director: Len Wiseman
Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, Jessica Biel, Bill Nighy
Synopsis:
An industrial worker in a society of the future feels dissatisfied enough with his life to apply to a software company for memory implants, but this destabilizes a previous reassignment, revealing him to be an agent for the Resistance...
Review:
Second filming of Dick's 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale', after Verhoeven's transgressive pastiche. This ignores Mars altogether, resolving itself into a series of chases around The Colony, and drawing heavily on The Terminator and I, Robot in the process. Unfortunately, because of the absence of character development (the hero only being defined by his present actions - the film's one nod towards something vaguely cerebral), it resembles nothing so much as a multi-level video game, with the cast actually looking like avatars in some of the stunt shots. What's more, it is not even consistent on its own terms: if Doug has been 'wiped' and condemned to live out his existence as an assembly line worker, what is Lori with him for? Why does his co-worker, who works for the Federation, give him the Rekall card? Finally, with all but the first day of the action taking place in The Colony, how do we find ourselves in the Federation travelling to the Colony in the final scenes, rather than vice versa, an impression compounded by the inclusion of shots of what are presumably meant to be Big Ben and the British Telecom tower in amongst the cityscapes?
Country: US/CAN
Technical: col/2.35:1 118m
Director: Len Wiseman
Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, Jessica Biel, Bill Nighy
Synopsis:
An industrial worker in a society of the future feels dissatisfied enough with his life to apply to a software company for memory implants, but this destabilizes a previous reassignment, revealing him to be an agent for the Resistance...
Review:
Second filming of Dick's 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale', after Verhoeven's transgressive pastiche. This ignores Mars altogether, resolving itself into a series of chases around The Colony, and drawing heavily on The Terminator and I, Robot in the process. Unfortunately, because of the absence of character development (the hero only being defined by his present actions - the film's one nod towards something vaguely cerebral), it resembles nothing so much as a multi-level video game, with the cast actually looking like avatars in some of the stunt shots. What's more, it is not even consistent on its own terms: if Doug has been 'wiped' and condemned to live out his existence as an assembly line worker, what is Lori with him for? Why does his co-worker, who works for the Federation, give him the Rekall card? Finally, with all but the first day of the action taking place in The Colony, how do we find ourselves in the Federation travelling to the Colony in the final scenes, rather than vice versa, an impression compounded by the inclusion of shots of what are presumably meant to be Big Ben and the British Telecom tower in amongst the cityscapes?
Country: US/CAN
Technical: col/2.35:1 118m
Director: Len Wiseman
Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, Jessica Biel, Bill Nighy
Synopsis:
An industrial worker in a society of the future feels dissatisfied enough with his life to apply to a software company for memory implants, but this destabilizes a previous reassignment, revealing him to be an agent for the Resistance...
Review:
Second filming of Dick's 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale', after Verhoeven's transgressive pastiche. This ignores Mars altogether, resolving itself into a series of chases around The Colony, and drawing heavily on The Terminator and I, Robot in the process. Unfortunately, because of the absence of character development (the hero only being defined by his present actions - the film's one nod towards something vaguely cerebral), it resembles nothing so much as a multi-level video game, with the cast actually looking like avatars in some of the stunt shots. What's more, it is not even consistent on its own terms: if Doug has been 'wiped' and condemned to live out his existence as an assembly line worker, what is Lori with him for? Why does his co-worker, who works for the Federation, give him the Rekall card? Finally, with all but the first day of the action taking place in The Colony, how do we find ourselves in the Federation travelling to the Colony in the final scenes, rather than vice versa, an impression compounded by the inclusion of shots of what are presumably meant to be Big Ben and the British Telecom tower in amongst the cityscapes?