There’s a lot of ascending and descending in a massive elevator contraption to get to The Colony, as well as a nightmarishly congested city, a million flying cars and buses, futuristic thousand-dollar bills, and a million crashes and explosions. It is a tremendous amount of brick-in-the-face time.
Quaid’s loss of memory, along with the discoveries that he possesses certain behaviors and abilities that seem distinctly secret agent-like, appears to be straight out of the movie The Bourne Identity. It’s been argued previously in these reviews that all action-thrillers since that movie have been “Bourne-ified,” and Total Recall is no exception, even mimicking “Identity” in plot.
There are three other movies that this remake seems to borrow heavily from. One is Blade Runner in terms of the film’s heavy, dark, dreariness and opening shots of rain-drenched futuristic cityscapes. Another is the first Recall, which it pays homage to in subtle ways. Finally, the cars in the film are reminiscent of The 5th Dimension.
The movie’s epistemology (the philosophical category regarding how humans know anything) is off-the-charts silly blather. After considering the brain, it talks about the heart—“The heart wants to live in the present.” That’s not bad.
Hopefully, seeing Total Recall will convince us to resist having our memories tinkered with, avoid getting hit in the face with bricks, live in the present, not worry, and be happy.
[etRating value=“ 3”]
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