Total Recall

This week's docket held the remake of Total Recall. I won the preview game, thanks to a wild guess on the first trailer: Paranormal Activity 4. Both of us are getting sick of 'found footage' movies, but they have low budgets, so they're not going away any time soon. Me, I'm going to make a 'found footage' video game and be a millionaire. The second trailer was Argo, which I got. We tied on Django Unchained, and Evan got Skyfall a split second before I did.

Total Recall is ironic on several levels. Okay, two. It's ironic on two levels. First, it's produced by Original Film. And second, because I'm totally recalling a movie I saw 22 years ago. Action movie, starred Schwarzenegger, dealt with identities: Kindergarten Cop! Nah, I'm kidding, it's the original Total Recall. And I didn't see it 22 years ago, although I'm pretty sure I saw it at a younger age than I should have (sorry Mom).

We look back at the first one now and think "Oh yeah, Sharon Stone!" But keep in mind, it was released two years before she got famous by flashing everyone in Basic Instinct. The remake has Kate Beckinsale in the Wife role, and Jessica Biel in the Love Interest role. And yeah, if I was going to implant memories in my head, they would definitely be involved.

And in case you really want to know, the three-breasted hooker shows up, very briefly. For my money, the scene from the original I most wanted in the new one was where Quaid pulls that huge tracking device out of his brain via his nose. Alas, in this one he only pulls some stringy electronics out of his hand, so it doesn't have quite the same effect.

In this one, there's no Mars. Instead, it's most of the world that's uninhabitable, because there's a whole bunch of poison gases around. Most people live in the gas-free lands of Great Britain or Australia, which divides neatly into the haves and have-nots and gives the movie unexpected social gravity. Promptly forgotten gravity, mind you, but gravity none-the-less. The remake makes up for a lack of Mars by giving us the perfect setting for the next Fallout game. Seriously, Bethesda or Obsidian need to get on that. I would play the hell out of Fallout: London.

Anyway, the movie starts off with a short action scene. It's filled with flashing lights and shaky-cam, so I'm not sure how much it actually counts as an action scene. Then it spends a bit of time setting up the plot, before kicking off several chase scenes. It really only slows down to explain the plot, and then picks back up into more action scenes. Finally, there's a short post-climax action scene, which I'm not a fan of. Movie Makers, you shouldn't use your dénouement for action. You should use all the action in the climax, making it better, not spreading it around afterwards.

There wasn't a whole lot of humour. I think "I give good wife" is supposed to be some sort of dirty allusion, but I didn't really get it. But the music was surprisingly good, so that made up for the humour. I might have to 'acquire' that score somehow. Based on that and the amount of action, I'm going to give this movie a Theatre rating. However, I should warn you again that I like crap a lot more than you guys. Even re-used crap. Hey, at least in a wasted world like the future, they're still thinking about recycling.

One last note that bugged me. Both movies try to be at least somewhat ambiguous about whether the events after Rekall are actually real or just a dream. But I don't remember Rekall having the ability to implant dreams, just memories. You wouldn't be lost in the present, just have fake memories of the past. For instance, instead of having worked last week, I could have vacationed in Aruba, or competed in the Olympics, or protested against environmental destruction. That way I could feel good about saving the environment without having to, you know, save the environment. But the point is, how can Quaid think he's dreaming if the only things implanted were memories?