Total Recall – give me a few days and I won’t recall a thing

I can’t recall anything of the original Total Recall. Oh, the irony.

You would suspect that someone has tempered with my brain, erasing all memories of it, replacing them with scenes from other 1990 movies. Edward Scissorhands.  Pretty Woman. Dances With Wolves (but not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since I’m the wrong generation). I leave it to you to decide if this would be an act of cruelty or a service.

But to be honest I think it’s more likely that I remember it all wrong. I never watched Total Recall back in the days. I just saw the picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger getting his head squeezed (looking surprised since he thought he had an appointment with his dentist) so many times that I finally thought I had seen it since it looked so familiar.

Be as it is with the reasons for my amnesia; the point is that I can’t compare the new Total Recall with the old one, which probably is in its own interest. This means that I’ll look at it as it is without getting my judgment clouded by irrational longings for my past youth and an over-sentimental love for movies from that time.

Action – not science fiction
Unfortunately this lack of attachment to the old film wasn’t enough to make me love the new one.  It’s probably a decent action film; I can’t tell standard action isn’t a genre I care for very much. But as science fiction it’s really nothing special.

This is saddening, since I think that there is a story with potential deep down there. I’ve always loved the kind of themes that the sci-fi author Philip K Dick brings up ( Total Recall is inspired by one of his short stories.) The walk along the borderline between reality and dream or imagination. The little man against the big organization. The questions about what it truly means to be a human.

However I get the impression that the makers of this film don’t care particularly much about ideas. They are there somewhere, but the time spent on them is abysmal.

The plot – about a man investigating why his memory has been tempered with and whose side he is on in the conflict between the last remaining inhabitable areas in a future where most of Earth is poisoned by chemicals – is just an excuse for very generic and long running action scenes. Shooting, running, car chases and explosions. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again.

To make sure they can sell tickets to the 11 year olds as well, they’ve made the action clean and harmless. No gore, no blood, no scenes of excruciating agony and pain. In one way it’s a relief for a squishy like me. But it’s also kind of bland.

After watching Total Recall what I felt strongest was an urge to revisit other movies, titles like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento, Inception and The Matrix. They also contain intriguing ideas about the nature of our minds – and they leave more space for this, not evolving into pure and pointless action like this one did.

The world
But come on, don’t I have anything nice to say at all? Well, I’ll give it as much as that I think it looks good. While I hated that the robot soldiers had the same plastic look as starship troopers, I liked the way they pictured the colony – always dark, always rainy, Asian style, reminding of Blade Runner. I also liked the few glimpses we got of the polluted world outside of the areas where people still lived. It’s just a pity we didn’t get to spend more time there or with that part of the story.

In a few days most of Total Recall will be lost to me – again. And believe me – it’s not a big loss.

Total Recall (Len Wiseman, US, 2012) My rating: 2,5/5

 

My colleagues in the Swedish network Filmspanarna also watched Total Recall. Here’s what they made of it (in Swedish):

Fiffis filmtajm
Flimbasen
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den (podcast)
Jojjenito
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