Film Review – Total Recall

As much as key creative personnel would like to suggest their new version of “Total Recall” isn’t a remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger action extravaganza, it is. Perhaps a few of the details have been changed, the setting altered, and the hero’s goals blurred, but the basic structure of survival is a copy of Paul Verhoven’s picture, not inspired by Philip K. Dick’s 1966 short story. The question is simple: why would anyone want to redo Schwarzenegger? What was once a vivid, demented runaway train of screen violence has been drained of life, turned into a generic shoot-em-up with vague plot objectives and an interchangeable cast of heavy breathers. Instead of Mars, there’s a refocus on futuristic tech, making this once explosive tale a monotonous mixture of “Minority Report” and “I, Robot.” Read the rest at Blu-ray.com