I don’t really understand Hollywood’s sudden desire to remake Paul Verhoeven’s unofficial sci-fi trio of 1987 – 1997, but new versions of RoboCop and Starship Troopers are underway and Total Recall is now in theaters.  There was no good reason to remake Total Recall, although the filmmakers have drastically changed the setting and background scenario to keep things different.  Now, chemical warfare has wiped out most of the world, except for England (!) and Australia — which serves as England’s colony.  A high-speed transport through the Earth’s core (!!!) connects the two, so that workers from Australia spend their days toiling in England before zipping back home again.  Into this uneasy political situation, one normal guy (Colin Farrell) suddenly learns the hard way that he is no ordinary man, but seems to be a spy under cover so deep he doesn’t even know who he really is.

The first film was confusing but it had some kick-ass action sequences, a great deal of irreverent humor, a terrific Jerry Goldsmith score and some real ideas behind it. This new version is earnest and snarky (sometimes concurrently), visually compelling (although the future looks far too much like that visualized in Blade Runner) and, to be fair, some decent ideas behind it.  If there had been no Verhoeven original, than this new adventure, directed by Len Wiseman but based on the same short story by Philip K. Dick, might be accepted as a fairly decent, ambitious project, despite its story holes.  But because it is a remake of a film pretty familiar to everyone over 25, it has taken critical lumps.

Some of those lumps are deserved; certain scenes are far too long or way too pat and predictable to be staged so dramatically, and the political situation envisioned is not presented in a realistic way at all.  Colin Farrell is given little to do but run, which is also true for Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel.  A thespian piece, this is not.  But given the facts that mainstream sci-fi now equates to blockbuster action and believable science is now considered totally unimportant to science-fiction movies, it really isn’t bad.  Of course, it’s not great, either.  At least the first Total Recall was fun. Enjoy the set design and the cool chase scenes of this one; it’s a pretty neat movie to look at, if not to think about.  ☆ ☆.  22 August 2012.