LITTLE ROCK — One of the most intriguing things about Len Wiseman’s version of Total Recall - which 22 years ago was an Arnold Schwarzenegger film directed by Paul Verhoeven - is a conveyance called “The Fall,” which whisks thousands of commuters from one side of the globe to the other (from “The Colony” established in present-day Australia to the “United Federation of Britain” in what we now call Western Europe) in, the film says, about 17 minutes.
While I’m dubious that any such device could be built to work, the filmmakers pay enough attention to create the illusion of serious research - for example, falling toward the center of the planet causes anything that’s not strapped down to drift in zero gravity, as it most surely would. It allows for a marvelous set piece that simulates space travel while keeping the movie firmly grounded on Earth.
Yet, that the movie caused me to ponder the engineering problems presented by The Fall is at once its greatest strength and its fatal flaw. Total Recall is a movie that will engage your interest - unfortunately, you’re likely to be thinking about the wrong sort of things.
That said, it is a serviceable dumb action film - complete with a wooden villainess (Kate Beckinsale) given to pithy would-be catchphrases. Colin Farrell is, on paper at least, an upgrade over the former “Governator,” who in his day didn’t act so much as embody an expensive special effect. Jessica Biel seems to have finally found a depth at which she is comfortable. And Bryan Cranston is enjoyable as perhaps the only person on either side of the camera who understands the inherent comedy of his role as the blow-dried politician bent on world domination.
Though why anyone would bother with dominating the world we’re presented with in the film is another question altogether. Set a couple of centuries in the future,after chemical warfare has rendered most of the world - including North America - uninhabitable, the chief problem faced by the survivors is overpopulation. Living space is difficult to come by and expensive in the UFB skyscrapers that rise thousands of stories into the clouds connected by M.C. Escheresque superstructures.
Even so, most of the working class are forced to live in the outer borough of The Colony, which looks a lot like the Los Angeles of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, dark and drizzly with neon signs blaring in foreign alphabets. That’s where Doug Quaid (Farrell), a factory drone who works in the UFB assembling synthetic police officers, lives.Quaid wants to do more with his life, and he’s bedeviled by dreams that suggest he was meant for nobler things. But when he mentions to his best friend Harry (Bokeem Woodbine) that he’s interested in trying out a new service that promises to implant wonderful memories in his head, Harry urges him to just say no.
But Quaid can’t resist, so one night after work he wanders down to a seedier part of town and sits down in a chair to receive a pack of memories. But before he can undergo the procedure, federation stormtroopers rush in to arrest him. Tapping into a reserve of strength and talent he didn’t know he possessed, Quaid kills them all and goes on the run.
Soon a woman from his dream (Biel) appears and fills him in on the work he has been doing for “the resistance,” which he joined after infiltrating it as a ruthless government operative. But Quaid can’t remember - or even imagine - this previous life, which renders him susceptible to all sorts of mind games.
And yet, this Total Recall is hardly what we had hoped for and the main impression it leaves is that of missed opportunity. Wiseman and company have succeeded in making a dumbed down version of the 1990 flick, which itself only grazed the possibilities of the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.” In Verhoeven’s film (which really wasn’t all that good either, at least not according to the review I wrote when it was released), there was some ambiguity as to whether what we had just seen was “real” or simply the fantasy of the lead character.
This “subjective uncertainty” - the inability of the human brain to distinguish between the “authentic” experience and the chemically induced one - is the nut graph of much of Dick’s work, but Wiseman and company treat it as almost an annoyance. Maybe two minutes is spent worrying whether Quaid is delusional. Then we recommence shooting and breaking things.
For the most part, we’re meant to take the constant running and shooting, the park our moves and hovercraft chases, as real world actualities. They don’t want you to think too much about this stuff, lest you start to wonder how The Fall makes it back up to the surface after it’s skirted (surely it doesn’t go directly through?) the core.
There’s nothing easier than falling into the abyss. What’s hard is making it back to the surface with all that dull and stubborn gravity tugging at you.
Total Recall 74
Cast:
Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine
Director:
Len Wiseman
Rating:
PG-13, for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, some sexual content, brief nudity, and language
Running time:
118 minutes
MovieStyle, Pages 31 on 08/03/2012