Total Recall – review

Paul Verhoeven's 1990 Total Recall , based on Philip K Dick's short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, was a lively dystopian sci-fi thriller set on Earth and Mars run by an authoritarian government that exaggerated the influences of a rebel force in order to remain in power. Directed by Len Wiseman (best known as a special effects expert and as director of the dismal Underworld vampire films), this remake is a dull movie. It largely sticks to the original's plot but is set entirely on our planet, now run as the United Federation of Britain, with two chief centres – a version of London and, on the other side of the globe, the Colony, which is little different from the polluted Los Angeles of Blade Runner . The two parts are connected by a lift that goes through the Earth's core. Colin Farrell is an unsatisfactory replacement for Arnold Schwarzenegger as the married proletarian who discovers he's really a former government agent who became a subversive freedom fighter and was given a new memory. The chief clue to his former identity is that he reads a tattered James Bond paperback on the bus to work. The 1990 version was witty and quirky, much of its charm coming from Arnie. It had a formidable villain in Michael Ironside and two really sexy women in the shape of Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin. Wiseman's film is (after 20 minutes of scene-setting) one long, repetitive chase with occasional pit stops. The special effects are unremarkable too, and lack the impact of the Verhoeven film.