Total Recall

Directed by Len Wiseman

(PG-13)

This remake of a 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller is “the summer’s most breathless film,” said Tom Long in The Detroit News. It’s also fairly brainless, but “if you share its desire for straight adrenaline, the ride works.” Filling Arnold’s big shoes, Colin Farrell plays a near-future factory worker who goes on the run after he pays for a virtual-reality adventure and discovers in the process that he once was an anti-government spy. Yet when you’re watching an adaptation of a story by sci-fi visionary Philip K. Dick, you hope for “vitality, soaring imagination, guts—not a retread of what has been done better elsewhere,” said Richard Corliss in Time. Despite credible turns by co-stars Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel, this PG-13 Total Recall “lacks not just the earlier film’s newness but its vigor, density, humor, and R-rated juice.” Farrell “can act rings around Schwarzenegger,” but he lacks Arnold’s charisma, said Bill Goodykoontz in the Phoenix Arizona Republic. Gone too is the mystery that animated the original—whether any of the action was actually happening. This time we get some fun chase scenes, but “not much more than that.”

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