Thursday, August 30, 2012

Total Recall

SF: Blah, Blah and more Blah. Someone bring back Arnie, please! The irony of having a production company called "Original Film" was the most entertaining part of the entire film. About an hour in I cried knowing how much longer we'd have to endure. Despite being a remake it manages to be different enough from its predecessor but I'm hard pressed to think any redeeming features. The only thing that tickled me was a joke about being king of Mars. This will be added to the list of boring Len Wiseman film...oh wait that's all of them. Cruel but true 2/10

DonkeyB: Is it possible to make a film so bad it made me go the wrong way home? What facial expression is Kate Beckinsale doing? In what year does London Underground get New York subway trains? How do you make a Phillip K Dick story so dull (in all senses of the word)? Isn't the production design a bit racist? All rhetorical questions you will never answer because you won't watch this film, or if you do you will invent a machine to wipe your memory of it. 2/10

50 Eggs: The original Total Recall is a stone-cold 10/10 for me. A thoughtful action blockbuster, I have watched it 15 times and each time change my mind about whether Arnie's adventure is real or not. The new version seems to completely miss the point on that score. I don't think the director cared about that element at all, meaning it just becomes a bog standard sci-fi film. I'm not going to be quite as harsh as SF and Donkey B though, because the visuals at least are a bit of a treat. 5/10

Overall: 2.9/10

2 comments:

50 Eggs said...

I watched the original on DVD last night. It's still SO good. I'd forgotten how much Inception owes to it. Also, I'd forgotten Arnie's classic 'Screw you!' while dispatching a bad guy with a pneumatic drill. Brilliant.

ShadowFalcon said...

I need to rewarch the original and soon. I think it's best if I take DonkeyB's advice and forget the remake ever happened