Total Recall

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Alex, Kim

A pretty needless remake. I could understand if they went back to the source material and did a re-adaptation, perhaps this time one that follows the original story a little more closely but instead they've just re-adapted the original film adaptation and changed a few details whilst keeping most of the beats exactly the same and many many callbacks for fans.

The best thing about the film is the world building. The production design, the fx, the cinematography and all top notch. It's pretty much Blade Runner, just with a slightly more digital sheen. The action is pretty non-stop.

Where the film is let down is all the stuff between the action. Whilst I can appreciate getting rid of all the corny early 90's action dialogue from the original at least that film had more of a sense of fun and a far greater understanding of how to create the ambiguous reality throughout the film, which is the main reason I love it so much. Here's it seems more like they are just stopping for bare minimum story beats so they can get back to the next action set piece. After a while the action becomes fatiguing.

So it's just the original film without a sense of wonder, fun, or character.