Warning: Some very real, very true spoilers included, no lie.
Total Recall is one of those films that thinks it's totally cool, dude, but isn't - *cough*Battleship*cough* - it's a lens flare fest of giant proportions, a relentless bombardment of CGI and cringe worthy dialogue. No matter how many ladies' boobs it cheekily shoves in your face, it's impossible to see past the fact it's got a few more than three flaws.
So, you're in the middle of a fight with somebody you thought was your wife for seven years but turned out to be a crazy spy lady who was sent to keep an eye on you because you're not who you think you are, you're someone far more dangerous (but even she didn't know that for some reason so fuck knows what she's be doing all this time) and you need to take a break from throwing punches to catch your breath - what do you do? Style it out with a cool bit of bitchy dialogue, of course. And, it's only fair if you let her have a go at a comeback. Done? OK - Fight! But don't hurt each other! We need the movie to go on for a few hours. Well, that, and it wouldn't work anyway! You're both invincible! Your wife, especially. She can survive humungous explosions but has one secret weakness - it's sure enough the only way to kill her once and for all. Push her out the back of an ambulance. Gone for good.
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| "I swear to god, I will almost kill you." |
It's shit. It's fucking awful. Really bad. Everything that's bad about a bad sci-fi is in this shitty movie. It's obsessed with being cool rather than staying relevant and has lens flares coming out of its backside. Two people can be sitting in a dark room with all the lights off and Total Recall will be flashing lens flares all over their faces. Cinemas should be providing special sun glasses on the way in to help shield our eyes. Come to think of it - why wasn't this film 3D? Of all the films in the world to choose, Total Recall seemed like the obvious option considering half the characters spend the majority of their lives leaping from great heights in the hope that they land on something soft, or, don't break their legs as they smash through a vast number of unrealistically breakable roofs. There really is a lot of jumping and a lot of hurried, worried running about. The problem though is that none of us give a shit. We know nothing about Douglas Quaid's life and neither does he and he doesn't know why any of this is happening and neither do we. It's very difficult to care!
Considering that according to all the characters the stakes are apparently so high, it's confusing why nobody takes the hundreds of opportunities they're given to kill their enemies. It's quite simple really, just pull the trigger and job done. Instead, people are distracted from firing their guns by things like 'bright lights', and prefer to draw out the process with yet more cheesily threatening dialogue. This is even more absurd when it becomes obvious that nobody needs to kill these characters anyway, seeing as they're all perfectly capable of killing themselves! Of course, they never do because Total Recall makes up its own mind about how gravitational force works. There's a special ship that rockets its way through the core of the Earth at ridiculously high speeds, yet our leading man and his bit of stuff, Melina, are quite capable of not only staying stood upright when a window is opened on board this ship, but they're also able to climb up a ladder on the outside of it while it's moving, through the centre of the Earth. Nobody's hair gets mucked up, not even a single untucked shirt. It's all a lie - people become invulnerable whenever the movie decides it doesn't fancy them dying just yet, which gives us even more reason to give up showing an interest.
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| The movie poster reminds us of a similarly crappy science fiction film... |
There's a load of sciencey problems with this movie, but there's a hell of a lot more problems with the plot - it never seems to know where it's going. One minute our main villain, Lori, who looks like a desperate housewife, gives her army of robot friends the order to shoot and kill Colin Farrell as soon as they next spot him - an order we pray is fulfilled swiftly - but the next thing everybody does is play an elaborate practical joke on the man, toying with his mind and trying to get him to shoot Melina in the face. Needless to say, he doesn't fall for it and we go back to the whole 'narrowly escaping gunfire' crap. The way in which he escapes the bad guys is often questionable, but sometimes not even addressed. We're left wondering what went on in between scenes and how ol' Quaid could have gotten from A to B so easily.
There are some things to enjoy however, such as the very opening scene which is accidentally reminiscent of Farscape's John and Aeryn, and Hal from Malcolm in the Middle is in it - Bryan Cranston. But that's about it. Oh, well there's the three boobs, yeah. And when it comes out on DVD be sure to pour yourself an alcoholic beverage and take a sip everytime your hear the line, "Oh shit!"
★☆☆☆☆
Roo