Total Recall looks epic. At least it does in the trailer. But does it live up to the epicness of the trailer, something many movies fail to do?
I recently experienced Total Recall (a remake of the 1990 Schwarzenegger flick) in a strange little theater, where all the seats are nearly flat, and now I am reporting back to you from my living room, where all the seats are completely flat.
The Plot.
Total Recall is basically a combination of "Unknown" and "The Bourne Identity" set in the future, 2084 to be exact.
The United Federation of Britain (UFB) is all nice, and clean, and ruled over by a man named Cohaagen and lots of robotic cops.
The Colony is dirty, overcrowded, and full of people who work "shit jobs for shit pay."
Everyday, thousands of workers from The Colony take "The Fall" all the way through the middle of the Earth to UFB, where they work in factories tirelessly, then take "The Fall" back to The Colony.
There's a rather small revolution going on in the Colony. They see the Fall as a sign go depression, and near enslavement, and say the Colony needs to earn its independence, and create jobs in the Colony, instead of in the UFB.
One man, Doug Quaid, lives in The Colony, and works in UFB as a factory worker. He applies for a promotion, but loses out to a better educated UFB citizen.
Eventually, he gets fed up with his life sucking, especially compared to his dreams as a kid, and goes to check out "Rekall," a company that implanted artificial memories into your brain, allowing you to "remember" being a secret agent, or a super star, or anything else.
He decides he wants to remember being a secret agent. The man helping him out tells him that they can't inject a fake memory if the memory is close to his reality, or it will cause massive confusion. He uses the example, if you have a mistress, we can't give you a fake memory of having a mistress, otherwise you will get confused about what is real and what is rekall.
Doug laughs and says that he's not a secret agent.
Just as the memory starts to be injected, the man helping him spazzes out, yelling to yank the needle.
"You lied!" he screams, "You're a spy!"
Just then about a dozen cops bust into the room, kill everyone but Doug, and then arrest Doug.
Then Doug somehow knows kung-fu, or something like it, and takes out all the cops, and escapes another wave of cops outside the building.
Now he is confused, is this the memory he was being injected with, or is this real?
He goes home, where his wife tries to murder him.
From there, the movie follows Doug as he tries to figure out what is real, and what is rekall…
The Review.
First of all, the world that this movie takes place in is amazing. The buildings are huge and awesome looking, and some hover. The cars hover (a feature that I don't completely see the advantage of, besides looking awesome), and there are lots of really cool robots and stuff.
All the scenes of the cities are really cool, and The Fall is just amazing looking.
Second, I will talk about approximately the first half of the movie. It is a chase scene. Literally. The entire first half of the movie is made up of about four chase scenes.
Yes, they are cool, but it gets a little annoying and repetitive, especially after almost an hour.
If the whole movie were like the first half, it would not be very good.
The second half was better. About half of the last half was all plot development, which was good.
The story was good, but not amazing. The central mystery of the movie, "What is real and what is rekall?" is not examined as much as it seems it should be, especially since it is the main mystery.
Then the last quarter of the movie is an awesome action sequence, which is a little cheesy at times, but overall pretty good.
There's a little too much of "everyone there died except for the main characters and the bad guys."
But the end is pretty epic.
One thing that annoyed me a lot was the camera zooming randomly. It reminded me of the classic Planet of the Apes series where bad camera angles were combined with corny music at times.
One thing I liked a lot was the lighting. At least, some of the lighting. It remind me of the awesome lighting from The Firm (TV series, not the movie), and some episodes of Fringe. Other aspects of the lighting annoyed me, like how it was almost always dark.
The Bottomline.
An enjoyable movie. A little heavy on the action and chase scenes, and a little light on the plot. Doesn't focus enough on the mystery, and is disappointing at times. Second half a little redeeming, better action, more plot. Not great, but worth seeing.
5.75 out of 10 stars
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