A hundred and eighteen minutes of eye-blasting sequences and awesome background & futuristic landscapes
but nearly two hours of complete boredom.
I haven't seen the original Total Recall for a long time now, but there is absolutely nothing to compare, as often with blockbusting remakes like that, some would say. And they are damn right. The story gets completely drowned into action/fight/runaway sequences and very few are the moments where you can truly say "wait, what is going on ?"—to be honest, it happened only once for me— and even that was way too shallow to be completely honest concerning what a viewer might accept. I'm not going to compare with the original.
Okay, you can find in this movie what you expect Science-Fiction should look like in the 2010s, clean and wide shots of futuristic cities, the use of Mag-Lev technology for Cube-like runaway scenes and video-game paced car chase scenes, not to forget gun fights in Zero Gravity. That's for the visual part. The mental is quite absent, not that much of mind-games, just enough to say "Okay, that's it for the plot, we can go back to fighting."
But Come on ! It's not the 90's anymore, you cannot pretend anymore that a battalion of elite soldiers and robot-cops fully geared can miss fully exposed unarmed heroes, even if the hero himself is a trained assassin. Hollywood should stop taking what worked 20 years ago when Schwarzenegger was still a class-A Action Hero and the bad guys emptied their clips at him without much success, now that the targeted audience is spending half of its time playing ultra-realistic First Person Shooter games That just doesn't do it anymore. When the awesome CGI background suggests you are in the future, the action just sends the audience back to what they are doing : watching a poor SF remake putting everything on CGI effects, action sequences and Colin Farrell trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong.
There are some poorly reflected scenes, as for the Recall part that is presented as the ultimate and most trendy thing there is in this post-apocalyptic society, and you find yourself witnessing the hero going to a place without any clients, hold by a bleached-haired Asian guy —what could be more cliché ? barely explaining the dangers as the sequence is already initiated and the hero is strapped on the chair. Once again, it feels like somebody said "quick, quick, get on with it, so we can throw in more action sequences !" Come on
Concerning the acting itself, Colin Farrell is doing is best, so quite good, but while Melina gives a somehow brain-dead acting as her character definitely lacks deepness, Kate Beckinsale is terrible, overdoing it playing the two-face hot bitch her character is, and in no time you find yourself praying for someone to shut her up, which doesn't occur until the end of the movie, that has been long, long, long, way too long. Not even 2 hours seemed like 3 and a half as the production clearly thinks you're dumb as f*ck and that Science Fiction means 90% of action for 10% of brain use & mind-game. They had the chance to do it otherwise, I really wonder why they didn't.
All in all, if you are fifteen year-old, a wannabe futuristic architect or designer, a stoner having two hours to kill or you're into badly used big budget action flicks or maybe all that at a time, this movie is for you. For the others, true Sci-Fi amateurs, die-hard fans of implanted memories/mind controlled heroes-based story or simply not considering yourself an idiot, you would better read a book than go to see this thing.
5/10 for visual design and that's all.
I haven't seen the original Total Recall for a long time now, but there is absolutely nothing to compare, as often with blockbusting remakes like that, some would say. And they are damn right. The story gets completely drowned into action/fight/runaway sequences and very few are the moments where you can truly say "wait, what is going on ?"—to be honest, it happened only once for me— and even that was way too shallow to be completely honest concerning what a viewer might accept. I'm not going to compare with the original.
Okay, you can find in this movie what you expect Science-Fiction should look like in the 2010s, clean and wide shots of futuristic cities, the use of Mag-Lev technology for Cube-like runaway scenes and video-game paced car chase scenes, not to forget gun fights in Zero Gravity. That's for the visual part. The mental is quite absent, not that much of mind-games, just enough to say "Okay, that's it for the plot, we can go back to fighting."
But Come on ! It's not the 90's anymore, you cannot pretend anymore that a battalion of elite soldiers and robot-cops fully geared can miss fully exposed unarmed heroes, even if the hero himself is a trained assassin. Hollywood should stop taking what worked 20 years ago when Schwarzenegger was still a class-A Action Hero and the bad guys emptied their clips at him without much success, now that the targeted audience is spending half of its time playing ultra-realistic First Person Shooter games That just doesn't do it anymore. When the awesome CGI background suggests you are in the future, the action just sends the audience back to what they are doing : watching a poor SF remake putting everything on CGI effects, action sequences and Colin Farrell trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong.
There are some poorly reflected scenes, as for the Recall part that is presented as the ultimate and most trendy thing there is in this post-apocalyptic society, and you find yourself witnessing the hero going to a place without any clients, hold by a bleached-haired Asian guy —what could be more cliché ? barely explaining the dangers as the sequence is already initiated and the hero is strapped on the chair. Once again, it feels like somebody said "quick, quick, get on with it, so we can throw in more action sequences !" Come on
Concerning the acting itself, Colin Farrell is doing is best, so quite good, but while Melina gives a somehow brain-dead acting as her character definitely lacks deepness, Kate Beckinsale is terrible, overdoing it playing the two-face hot bitch her character is, and in no time you find yourself praying for someone to shut her up, which doesn't occur until the end of the movie, that has been long, long, long, way too long. Not even 2 hours seemed like 3 and a half as the production clearly thinks you're dumb as f*ck and that Science Fiction means 90% of action for 10% of brain use & mind-game. They had the chance to do it otherwise, I really wonder why they didn't.
All in all, if you are fifteen year-old, a wannabe futuristic architect or designer, a stoner having two hours to kill or you're into badly used big budget action flicks or maybe all that at a time, this movie is for you. For the others, true Sci-Fi amateurs, die-hard fans of implanted memories/mind controlled heroes-based story or simply not considering yourself an idiot, you would better read a book than go to see this thing.
5/10 for visual design and that's all.
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