Maybe I'm in Rekall right now and this is all some elaborate alternate reality, but my vivid memories of the SchwarzeneggerTotal Recall (made 22 years ago by that "master" of intricate plotting, wry humor and sub-tle human interactions*, Paul Verhoeven) was of an R-rated Sci-Figore-fest, light on "Gee-Whiz" and heavy with Cheese-Whiz, that seemed to mark the limit to how much Arnold could contort his face.**The one thing I remember being amusing was Sharon Stone as Doug Quaid's wife, in an arch performance that basically made her a star.***
This "re-imagining" (if you will) has Colin Farrell as Quaid,****working on an assembly line for synthetic security forces—robo-cops (although they more resemble—and collapse just like—the battle-droids in the Star Wars prequels). The elaborate set-up has the world decimated by chemical weapons making the world inhabitable on only two islands, Britain and Australia. The most precious commodity, thus, is living space, and the commute from one to the other is a tough one, a high-speed transport through the Earth's core—the shortest distance between two points being a straight line (would really have hated to be a construction worker on that project!).
Anyway, Quaid is beset by dreams of running, chasing, shooting and loss, waking up in a cold sweat to find himself sleeping next to Lori (Kate Beckinsale, a fine actress—remember her in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing—who is going to be stuck in kick-ass roles as long as Keira Knightley, Michelle Williams, and Carey Mulligan are alive), who works for security for the United Federation of Britain, and its leader Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), which begs the question: Where's the Queen? And begs the question: she's married to a factory worker?
But if we start picking nits we'll be here until the time the movie's set in. Leave it that there are plot-holes larger and deeper than the one running through the planet, and it all begins when Quaid decides to go to the Rekall facility in his local city (which I believe is Great Britain, but owes a lot to Ridley Scott's Los Angeles in Blade Runner...and Spielberg's D.C. in his own version of Dick'sMinority Report), a divey section of town with a yen for Chinese decor. Basically, he wants a spy fantasy, where there are double identities, secret plots and no one can be trusted.
He gets it, but whether it's reality or a drug-induced fantasy he has no way of knowing. Something goes horribly (horribly) wrong, and by the end of his session, all the Rekall technicians are dead, as well as a dozen security forces, who burst in (pretty quickly, too) and whom Quaid overcomes in a single-shot, digitally-tracked shot that resembles a first-person shooter game.
Which is what this movies is, essentially—game scenarios, one after the other, trying to get to the next level. It's not that this Total Recall is anything less than competent. It truly is, and the cast is fine and all. But, it's never anything more than that, there's nothing very inspired...except from other sources, movies and video-games, mostly,*****and tangential stuff at that.
But, although attempts have been made to make it sleeker and faster-paced, there is no attempt to make it better or develop themes that the first film dropped for kinetic thrills. When you're dealing with alternate realities, why leave it at one? Why not keep the audience on edge on what's true? Why not make the stakes a little bit higher, so there are more consequences (like what this movie hints at in an early scene) for Rekall users, so there's more at risk than physical pain? This is Inception-material, but on only one level, and it's a sub-level at that. The potential was there to do more, but, instead, it's more of the same.
And Len Wiseman, the director of this, and the "Underworld" films, seems not to have much ambition for the "new." It's a few films in now, and one can say that he's not aspiring to much, other than keeping both the budget and the pace high. It's not so much directed, as art-directed, full of detail to distract from the lack of depth—highly finished, but with a sub-standard foundation. There was so much that anyone could do with this material to make it rise above the first one, rather than just make it worse.
"But, I don't WANT to be in a bad Schwarzenegger movie!"
"Vhich one: Jingle All the Vay or Last Ahction Hero?"
* ...usually involving fists, but in this case involving anything that could penetrate a human torso or face. This one was a particularly nasty exercise in excess, and I remember Schwarzenegger shilling it on Entertainment Tonight: "Yah, It's a GREAT FAMILY moo-vie, Bring the KIDS!" I was horrified to see that some idiot-parents actually did, and those kids have probably been in therapy for a couple years now. ** ...without special effects, anyway. *** It put her on the path, anyway, as Verhoeven was so impressed with her that he cast her in Basic Instinct, then she was a star in a flash. **** A better match, I think, than Schwarzenegger. Farrell is more relatable, and you could see him as a factory worker, which makes the concept—which is telegraphed and anticipated to the Nth degree in both films—work a bit better. Schwarzenegger can't be believed as a factory worker—he's too much of a "800-pound gorilla in the room" to be hiding in such plain sight. The original concept...and casting...had someone like Richard Dreyfuss in the role. Now, THAT would have been fun, and surprising. ***** A lot from the first film, of course, but it's weird stuff—the plaid pattern that Quaid wears at some point, the woman in the transport station—there to fake out only the audience that had seen the first film—and the triple-breastedprostitute (probably because it's what the geeks remember...and want). All of which will bring me to an up-coming point...
The last Wolverine movie—which was also the only entry in the "X-Men: Origins" series—was not very good. But, like Wolverine healing from his wounds and coming back whole, hope springs eternal like adamantium claws, and there were enough interesting aspects toThe Wolverinethat one wondered if this time they might have got it right. They were basing it on the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller mini-series from way, way back, and the director is James Mangold, who did Cop Land and Walk the Line. I mean he's no Darren Aronofsky (who he replaced on the project), but maybe, just maybe... It tries very hard.
The script went through the hands of many writers, some of them quite accomplished—Christopher McQuarrie, Scott Frank—and Mark Bomback, who wrote Unstoppable and Live Free or Die Hard. It retains some of the Claremont-Miller story, like the beginning with a self-exiled Wolverine living in the mountains, and his dealings with a bear and its careless hunter, but abandons most of it, causing it to suffer from serious story-bloat. There are echoes of the original throughout—a mention of a bullet-train from the story turns into a full-fledged battle on the top of one in this—but instead of echoes, we have the roar of something almost wholly new, adding other elements and characters from other stories in the canon (thankfully limited to this world). For example, it gives us a back-story of how Logan (Hugh Jackman) first met the man he will be dealing with in the movie—Yashida (Ken Yamamura in these scenes, then aging to Hal Yamanouchi).It's World War II, and he's in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, conveniently close to the city of Nagasaki, just when the second atomic bomb is dropped. Logan shields the POW guard from the effects of the blast that crisps Logan, but, no worries, he heals from the effects in five minutes, although very painfully.
Fast forward. When we find Logan in the present, he is haunted by nightmares of his dead love Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). As she died in the egregiously terribleX-Men: The Last Stand, I know exactly how he feels—I'm still bitter about how they atomized the Scott Summers/Jean Grey relationship in that movie. While he's attending to the bear hunter in the bar, he's confronted with the pint-sized assassin Yukio (Rila Fukusima), who, in her stealth ninja style has electric red hair. Fascinating. She is in the employ of Yashida, who requests the man who saved his life at Nagasaki to do him a service before his death.* That would be in the form of relinquishing his mutant-powers to him. Makes sense—he's dying and wants to live forever, while Logan is living forever and hates it. Nobody's happy, so why don't we switch each other's green grass. Well, despite his oft-professed existential pain, the mutant either has a change of heart or he just knows how to position it and says that he would never curse someone with his everlasting powers, so, thanks but no thanks. Easy for him to say, he's living forever.
Yeah, I know Frank Miller likes it, but I never "bought" the "Claws-stops-samurai sword" variation of Rock/Scissors/Paper.
Yashida dies (thanks, Wolverine!), distressing his family, including daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) who is attacked and threatened with kidnapping at her father's very public funeral. So much for stealth. At this point, it becomes a chase between the forces trying to kidnap Mariko (but who?) and some mysterious forces behind it all. Oh. And fights. And chases. And Logan gets hurt. And fixes himself, because that's what he does, even if it undermines any sort of tension that he actually might get killed.
Why do they usually change the comic-costumes of characters?
Because they look stupid, that's why!
What Claremont and Miller cooked up in their mini-series was okay, if slightly uneventful. But without the Mariko-Logan back-story of the original tale, what Mangold and his writers have done is complicate things...a lot, drag in a standard Marvel villain, Viper (played by Svetlana Khodchenkova) (orMadame Hydra, as she was occasionally known and they dress her up in the customary cut-away latex thing the character always seemed to wear) and basically start from scratch, occasionally waving at the original story.
The whole thing feels convoluted and clunky and only brings some surprises if you've actually read the comic books—standard movie-goers just get the usual twists and turns that they can see coming a mile away. Mangold does try and bring something to the fights, but, with a PG-13 rating expected for the thing, there's only so much slashing that can be done in anything more than a suggestive fashion. As with the other X-men/Wolverine movies, you aren't shown the cleavage that happens when the SNIKT! hits the fan. For all the talk of the character's bad-assery, the violence that his powers implies and the fan-boys want to see will always be ham-strung by the movie ratings system.
Despite Jackman's performance (and he'll always be associated with this role no matter how many musicals he'll do) this one doesn't feel fresh or fun, recycling a lot of material, but more so. That centerpiece fight on top of a bullet-train is the same sort of thing we've seen before—and recently in James Bond, Spider-man and The Lone Ranger—but the same stuff is being done, just faster and less impactful. Despite the constant threat of falling off or de-capitation (for Wolverine, everything will just heal), how can you make a fight on a bullet-train dull?
Well, maybe not so much dull as ludicrous.
Stick around as the credits roll out, though, for a couple of essential appearances—one of which is very surprising—that will lead into X-Men: Days of Future Past, which will attempt to unite the original X-men films with the "First Class" ret-conning to smooth out some of the two series continuity issues.
Really, does it matter? How about just concentrating on making a better movie, like the First Class formula-blaster was?
Okay, I REALLY don't buy the claws stopping the Silver Samurai's sword. ("The Silver Samurai??")
* Wait a second here. Wolverine saves HIS life at Nagasaki, and pulls him all the way to Japan to do this? I know he's an international crime-lord and all, but that's really against any "pay-back" principle or criminal code of conduct I've ever heard of. "You saved my life, so to repay you, I'm going to ask you to save it again." Oh. Well! When you put it THAT way!
