"Are you happy with how our lives turned out?" Well, obviously not if you're Colin Farrell's character, Doug Quaid, in Len Wiseman's Total Recall. A soft remake of Paul Verhoeven's 1990 film, but really sticks closer to Philip K. Dick's short story, the film follows Quaid as he gets mixed up with Rekall, a company that can turn fantasy into reality. Not satisfied with his frustrating job or his marriage, he's implanted with real memories of life as a spy, only to see the Rekall procedure go screwy, and suddenly Quaid finds himself the most wanted fugitive in the nation.
It's hard to figure out exactly who the audience for Total Recall is. Likely to be buried against the onslaught of The Dark Knight Rises, probably the only ones who'll turn out are those who remember the previous film fondly, and certainly it appears that Wiseman is playing up to those folks in this trailer with the not so subtle hinting of a three-breasted alien. The rest is stuff we've mostly seen before, with Blade Runner clearly the inspiration for the film's look. What also seems apparent is that the whole identity crisis part of the story may not be that big of a deal, and that it will mostly exist to lead to the next big action sequence. Honestly, that may be the best way to go, as even Verhoeven's film got a little lost in its own jumble of mysteries. Wiseman isn't a director worth getting too excited over, but he's capable of decent, inoffensive thrillers(such as the Underworld movies), and that's probably what we can expect out of Total Recall. Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho, and Ethan Hawke co-star.
Total Recall opens on August 3rd....
