Movie Review: Total Recall

My family got this at a movie exchange the other day and they watched it without me and said it was pretty good, with the look in their eyes that said, “Tim, you should watch this and write a review on it.” You’re welcome, family.

First off, you have Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) going to a crappy job in the current United Kingdom, now called the United Federation of Britain, after traveling from current-day Australia, now the Colony, through the Earth’s core to the UFB. That is already a lot to take in, but the movie just keeps on moving. Doug is tired of his uneventful life and decides to visit the Total Recall center, a place where people can experience real-life situations or lives that the person never got the chance to live. For example, maybe someone wants to pretend to be a spy for a day, which is what Doug ends up choosing. He’s about to get hooked up and then alarms start going off, the doctor pulls a gun out of nowhere, and starts screaming at Doug, “You’re a spy, who sent you here?!”, followed by at least a dozen police officers coming in and shooting up the place and telling Doug to get on his knees with his hands above his head. Wait, what? Let’s slow down here a little bit. Well, the whole premise is that Doug went into one of these mind experiences, right? Or is this for real? So it’s one of those two…okay.

Yeah, that’s the reaction that most people will probably have after this because you don’t really get a chance to think about it for a little bit during boring dialogue because everything is happening so fast. I can appreciate this, because this is usually how I like my movies, unless there are too many confusing aspects to the movie, so many that I kinda want to pause the movie every ten minutes to re-collect my thoughts and make sure I’m understanding everything correctly.

I realized half way through that this was like a poor man’s Jason Bourne in a futuristic society. Doug, if that’s even his name, doesn’t know who he is, just as Bourne doesn’t know who he is. While the concept of having to defend yourself against a bunch of people trying to kill you and trying to figure out who you are at the same time is an interesting concept, there’s one major flaw that I don’t think filmmakers realize: If the main character doesn’t know who he is, how is the audience supposed to know who he is? If your main character can’t share anything about himself with the audience because he doesn’t know who he is, where is the character development going to come from? The only way to find out more about Doug is to hope the people trying to kill him open their mouths and say something relevant, which is a little hard since they’re going through intense fight scenes and Doug is killing them one after another.

The plot is also very similar to a typical I-don’t-know-what’s-going-on-or-who-I-am-but-I-can-fight-like-a-boss movie. After dealing with the police officers, he runs back home to his wife and starts saying what happened, and Kate Beckinsale just plays dumb, saying, “No you didn’t honey, everything’s fine” blah, blah, blah. He also finds out more about himself in, who would have guessed, a safe-deposit box, where he finds numerous fake passports and various currencies. Sounds familiar, *cough* Bourne *cough*. He then finds a secret recording that can answer questions but only if Doug asks the right ones. This also sounds familiar, *cough* I Robot *cough*. While the futuristic setting is enticing, I want to understand what’s going on before being stunned with creative visuals that seem to pawn off other films, such as I Robot and Minority Report.

Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel do their part but nothing special. Farrell does the best he can but when your script says something like the following, there’s only so much you can do: “You don’t know what’s going on. Continue to ask questions such as ‘who am I, why am I being chased, and what happened to me’, except use different wording each time you decide to regurgitate this information.’

Once again, if you’re new to my blog,  I’ve always ranked movies on a scale of 0-100 (I don’t know why, I just always have). Here’s the grading scale.

 90-100  It’s a great movie and definitely one worth buying. (Iron Man 3, World War Z, 42)

80-89   It was a pretty good movie and definitely one worth seeing, but it doesn’t quite scratch my top ten percentile. (Star Trek Into Darkness, Now You See Me, Man of Steel, Monster-In-Law, White House Down)

70-79   It’s okay but I’ve seen better. It has its moments, but it has its flaws, too. (Oblivion, The Wolverine, Jagged Edge)

60-69   It’s got plenty wrong with it but I still got enjoyment out of this one. (Pacific Rim)

50-59   This movie isn’t intolerable but it’s not blowing my mind either. I’m trying really hard to get some sort of enjoyment out of this. (The Hobbit, After Earth, Road to Perdition)

40-49   This movie is just mediocre. It’s not doing anything other than the bare minimal, so morbidly boring that sometimes I’m actually angry I watched this. (Patriot Games)

30-39   Definitely worse than mediocre, the 30’s ironically define the 1930’s, full of depression, lack of accomplishments, poverty and just so dumb. (The Contract, Pride and Prejudice)

20-29   What did I just watch? Cliches, stupidity, nothingness, did I mention stupidity? Just…wow. (The Sum of All Fears)

0-19      Watching this movie resulted in one or more of the following: seizure, loss of brain cells, falling asleep/unconsciousness, feel you wasted your time/day, accomplished nothing for you, left the movie knowing less about it then you did going into it, constantly asking yourself why you came to see this movie, or near-death experience. In short, staring at a wall was just as entertaining as watching this movie. This movie deserved a sticker or a label that said, “WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNT OF SUCKAGE.” (Midnight Cowboy)

My score for Total Recall: 56. 

I’ll admit I wasn’t wild about the Bourne movies, but those movies had some sick action scenes. I also cared about the characters despite not knowing a lot about them. The Bourne movies bested Total Recall in both areas. I just don’t get enough character development or character connection to really care for Doug all that much. It was an average movie, but nothing more.

*SPOILER ALERT* IF YOU DON’T WANT THE MOVIE SPOILED, STOP READING!!!

*SPOILER’S EDITION*

I never really learn who Jessica Biel is other than Matthias’ lieutenant. The only thing that makes her good is she’s not shooting at Doug and the audience is kinda stuck with going, “I guess she’s a good guy???” I was waiting for her to have a short monologue describing the relationship that Doug and her had before or something, but I didn’t get that. When they go to visit Matthias in the danger zone, Doug’s evil wife and the chancellor somehow show up in what felt like a minute and a half after they arrive. The filmmakers showed Doug and Jessica Biel looking back quite often to see if anyone was following them, so how did they find them? Does Doug have a tracker inside him or something? We never find out.

Something else that bothered me was the character of Charles Hammond, played by Dylan Scott Smith. Google didn’t even bother putting him on the cast list on the top bar so I had to search for him a little before I could even find who played him. While the Google cast list may not think he’s important, I think he’s one of the main problems of this movie for me. After the first fight with his wife, Doug gets a phone call from inside his hand from Hammond, who won’t tell him much of anything besides “get to this safe deposit box” and “I can’t talk long”. “Who is this guy?” I asked myself. “Well, I guess the movie will tell me later because there’s no way they would just leave me hanging.” After the chancellor kills Matthias, they take Jessica Biel and have a few soldiers stay back to retrigger Doug’s memory and bring the patriotic soldier that was Carl Hauser back. One of the soldiers ends up to be Hammond, who ends up freeing Doug’s bonds and killing all the other guards while getting shot himself. Hammond dies before Doug can get up and say anything. “Wait what? Who is Hammond?! Who WAS Hammond?!” The audience is just like, “Well..I guess he was a good guy on the inside.” We just have to assume that’s the case. You know what I hate doing when watching a movie? Having to assume that something is the way it is because the filmmakers were too lazy to tell me who someone was or why something happened! Just like I had to choose at the beginning whether this was for real or not because it wasn’t clear enough if it was for real or not. I thought he was having a total recall experience, only to find out at the end of the movie that it was all for real, all because this guy was too lazy to say what the frack is going on! And this is the same guy who directed the masterpiece Live Free or Die Hard?! Makes me want to throw up!