‘Total Recall’ (2012) Review

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What is real and what is “rekall”? These are the questions you will ask yourself after watching this action-packed remake. Total Recall is a wild ride that I can only describe as a combination of Inception, Minority Report, and I, Robot. While this movie is a remake of the 1990 Schwarzenegger film, it does a really good job of setting itself apart. First off there is no trip to Mars and secondly, the movie bears a strong political overtone. The film stars Colin Farrell as Douglas Quaid, a factory worker who is tired of his menial life and longs for better memories. After receiving a tip from a new guy at his job he decides to visit Rekall so that his memories can be altered. Very quickly things go wrong and he is forced to run for his life and find out the secrets of his past in order to find out who he truly is. The film itself is the most innovative and futuristic of any sci-fi flick to date. The technology boasted in this film seems highly plausible all though a bit out of reach. The most interesting piece of tech in the film is the giant elevator that bullets from one side of the Earth, right past the core, and arrives on the other side. Along with Colin Farrell, the film has a great cast including Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, and Bill Nighy. They all do a great job at making this film fun to watch. Everybody held their own weight with each of the main characters getting an equal amount of screen time. As I watched this movie I compared it to the original and tried to see how they were similar and how they differed.  In the end, I concluded they were very different films, yet similar in spirit. Almost like they are fraternal twins, one more espionage-based and the other more action based. Throughout the film, all I could think is whether what I was watching was real or a dream. It’s thoroughly up to the viewer in the end which I think is great. This film is a really good action movie to end the summer on and also one of the better remakes I have seen in awhile. This film knows how to be different while still paying homage to its original. I give Total Recall (2012) a Decent 8/10.

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