British Actress Blog

Total Recall (2012)

Score: 8/10

Director: Len Wiseman

Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Bill Nighy.

Total Recall

Kate Beckinsale

Synopsis: A factory workers named Douglas Quaid ( Colin Farrell ) begins to suspect that he is a spy after visiting Rekall, a company that provides its clients with implanted fake memories of a life they would like to have.

Review: Douglas Quaid is an average warehouse worker who is haunted by a recurring bad dream. At his job, while training new hires, he is told about a place where artificial memories are implanted into a persons mind called Rekall. After work he goes to this place and begins the memory implantation.

Lori

Kate Beckinsale

Kate Beckinsale’s character is unrealistically one dimensional. She is very evil for the sake of being evil. There are times in this film where you wonder if she is some kind of synthetic humanoid robot because of her character’s behavior. She is very much like a death dealer in this film. She does a great job actually. Colin Farrell is most definitely wearing plot amour all throughout the whole film. He has taken blows and falls that would killed any other human. Yet he gets up like it was just a scratch. Its funny how these movies gives us an action hero who can’t die. Yes I know, if the hero dies, roll credits.

Douglas Quaid

Colin Farrell

This is yet another film that focuses on the concept of reality, the question of ‘what is real’. Much like the Matrix (1999), the hit TV show Mr. Robot, and the diner scene from the Vin diesel movie xXx (2003). The main protagonist is always put in many situations that makes the protagonist question their current experience. We as people on this planet have virtual lives as well. Especially with social media and online personas. The film has shades of the movie Blade Runner (1982), The Fifth Element (1997), Ghost in the Shell (2017), Minority Report (2002), and Ultraviolet (2006) about it, which is fine, I really like those kind of movies. I really like Kate Beckinsale’s use of the synthetic police. How she takes cover behind them while they fire at their target.

Interesting Film

Not Bad

The cinematography is perfect. The lighting is a bit dark but well done. The set dressing, backgrounds, and wardrobe are fine for what they are and the time period the film is trying to portray. You can hear the superb musical score of Harry Gregson-Williams. His score is always great from video games like the Metal Gear Series to the films like The Rock (1996) and déjà vu (2006). This movie is very fast paced. Colin Farrell is jumping around every where in this film just like Tom cruise does in his films. The movie is packed with action and story. The film pushes the plot and story forward from the first frame. One plot twist after another and another. The unfortunate problem with films like these are that they are very predicable. You already know where the film is headed from the first act. Luckily this film does what it does very well. All of the actors in this film do a great job. Len Wiseman’s style of movie making works well here. The film looks very high quality. The story is very fast paced but has smooth story telling across the board. This film is good to watch if you want to see an action flick.

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