TOTAL RECALL (2012)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*

Len Wiseman's 2012 remake of the 1990 film is a sterile time-waster. It's not surprising that Wiseman and his writer-team ditched the idea of the Mars-mutants, for in essence Wiseman is devoted to showing a lot of really pretty people running around shooting at and fighting with each other-- mostly Colin Farrell (as Quaid), Jessica Beil (as Melina, the "good girlfriend"), and Kate Beckinsale (as "bad wife" Lori).  This concentration on hot-bods may become clearer when one knows that Beckinsale also happens to be married to Wiseman and has starred in the UNDERWORLD franchise Wiseman co-created.  Now I don't want to sound like one of those Puritans who can only enjoy violence when it's linked to some serious theme.  On the contrary, I enjoy such pulp-fun-- seen both in Wiseman's UNDERWORLD and the earlier-cited COMMANDO-- when it's well done. 

Wiseman's RECALL, however, is a derivative bore.  The scripters do away with the extravagant SF-idea of controlling air on Mars, and in its place is a sort of "ethnic cleansing" plot, in which Cohaagen plans to annihilate the colonial populace of Mars in order to replace them with money-saving "synthetics." (It's not clear how this mass murder was going to be viewed by the authorities on Earth.) This change in plot necessitates a change in Quaid's role, but it's one that proves much less believable in terms of Cohaagen's actions.  Beckinsale and Biel are sexy women but they, like Quaid, are constantly dressed in dark, ugly colors, as shown in the image above.  This surprises me in that the UNDERWORLD films show a degree of visual stylishness nowhere present in Wiseman's RECALL.  It may be that Wiseman had some notion of mitiating Scorcese in order to keep his RECALL distinct from that of Verhoeven, since the first twenty minutes has a ponderous, grundgy quality, particularly some time-wasting scenes in which Quaid is seen out drinking with his work-buddies.

Aside from a lively duel in an elevator-- where Lori fights Melina and Quaid fights a robot soldier-- most of the action is predictable and tedious.  It does rewrite one aspect of the 1990 film that bothered me: whereas Schwarzenegger's super-muscular Quaid simply bursts his bonds to escape a climactic trap, Colin Farrell's Quaid must use his wits to accomplish the same ends.