Recently, I decided to pop out and watch 'Total Recall', and at the time I thought to myself 'This is actually a lot better than I originally expected'. And after about a day or two I thought back to that lovely night only to discover that I couldn't recall the majority of the film apart from the following scenes (no spoilers): The removal of Quaid's phone, the fight in Rekall, and finally a scene which includes a relatively clever question regarding the films taglines of 'What is Real' and 'What is Recall'. Other than those scenes, I found it to be fairly forgettable, which in a way made me quite sad because I did enjoy watching it as a film on its own, but when compared to Arnie's classic, it was really quite polarised. With little sparks of the originals brilliance coming through in the form of a series of cleverly placed homages and some genuinely impressive action sequences, Total Recall leaves you with the memory of a film that shows great potential in parts, but is ultimately weighed down by skeletal characters, a fairly unimaginative story and an overall lack of the humor, detail and substance that made the original the classic that it still is.
In conclusion
As a stand-alone title, I give Total Recall a 6-7 out of 10.
But as a remake for the original it earns a disappointing 3 out of 10.
'What about that guy you lobotomized? Did he get a refund?'
-Jamie
Copyright Jamie King 2013, All Rights Reserved, permissions may be granted by request.
