Total Recall (2012)

The new Total Recall opened today. The thing of it is – that this film isn’t at all memorable. I found myself thinking of other films that this one brought to mind. Though this film has the same title and the same source material, a Philip K. Dick short story, this is not a remake. Meaning they say it isn’t a remake. But when I recalled the original Total Recall, from 1990, which starred Ah-nuld, Sharon Stone, Rachel Ticotin, and Ronnie Cox as Douglas Quaid, Melina, Lori, and Cohaagen – I found that the lead four characters in this one have the same names.

Here, Douglas Quaid is played by Colin Farrell, Melina is played by Jessica Biel, Lori is performed by Kate Beckinsale, and Cohaagen is played by Bryan Cranston. We don’t learn much about any of them including Farrell’s Quaid. The story begins after a short crawl which tells us that Earth has been ravaged by chemical warfare, and there are only two places capable of sustaining life. One being the United Federation of Britain, and the other is called The Colony – but on the global map that we are shown, The Colony is Australia.

Life is nothing special on the Colony. In fact it bears a distinct resemblance to the futuristic world that we saw in Blade Runner. Neon, rain, umbrellas, and other Asian influences. Many who live on the Colony, work in the Federation and they are able to commute to work. Right – not by traveling up to space and then back in a fast quarter orbit – but by traveling via high-speed transportation vehicles which make the trip through a tunnel in the earth’s core. The trip includes super high speeds and even a portion of it has zero gravity – but takes so little time that people can make the commute twice a day.

Farrell/Quaid works on an assembly line in a factory where synthetic police are assembled. These look like a cross between the robots in I Robot, and the troopers in Star Wars. They have the fluidity of motion that a human would have, and the disposibility of the robots. However, it must be noted that the implied menace is only implied. They’re incapable of rising anywhere above the level of total ineffectiveness.

The film opens in the midst of Quaid having a nightmare, and he’s unhappy enough in his life, to try out Rekall, a place where artificial memories are created according to your desires, and implanted into your memory. Only with Quaid’s visit, something goes horribly wrong, and he has to flee for his life after a shoot out with the synthetic police. Quaid’s selection at Rekall was that of a secret agent.

Needless to say, the rest of the film has him trying to figure out what is real, what is a dream, and who he really is. “If I’m not me, then who am I?”

Contraband

I guess I’ve loved Mark Wahlberg as an actor since he did so wonderfully as Charlie Croker in The Italian Job in 2003. What made that film so much fun was the fact that they had to steal the same gold bars twice. In the brand new (opened today – Friday the 13th) Contraband – Wahlberg and company do a great job of marketing the film, but it ends up with you and I, the consumers, being the victims as we are out the cost of our tickets. And 2 hours of our lives.

The best thing I can say about my trip to the cinema to see this film today, was that along with Contraband, I saw the trailer for the next Denzel Washington thriller called Safe House which opens on the 10th of February.

Contraband isn’t so much of a stinker, it’s more like competent and workmanlike at best but most folks won’t be willing to rate it that high. It’s the tale of someone who thought he was out of the life (of crime), and then he was (all-together-now) pulled back in.

Wahlberg ‘s character is Chris Farraday – a super smuggler now going straight with his own security installation business. He’s MWK (married with kids), he’s very happy, and his Dad, now incarcerated, calls the day when Chris left the life, the happiest day of his life.

But Farraday’s brother-in-law got himself between a rock and hard-place. He was running in a drug shipment aboard a ship that the CPB (Customs & Border Protection) cops decided to interdict. He was either going to be found in possession of more than 10 pounds of an illegal drug by the cops, or he could dump it in the harbor, and then hope for the best with the bad guy who would have neither his drugs nor his buy money.

The bad guy, called Tim Briggs, is played by Giovanni Ribisi. What goes around comes around as it was in 2000 that Ribisi played the relative caught between a similar rock and a hard place in Gone in 60 Seconds, and had to be rescued by his brother played by Nicholas Cage. So Ribisi has ‘graduated’ from the not-ready-for-prime-time-crime kid to the other side of the coin as a tough crime boss who wants his shipment.

Ribisi doesn’t quite have the look or feel of what the role requires. It wouldn’t matter how many jailhouse tats he sports, or his beard and general scruffiness – he’s not right for the role.

So Wahlberg as Chris Farraday, has to strap it on, and get himself down to Panama, on a freight carrying ship, so he can earn a sizeable chunk of change running in (smuggling) 15 Million in super-notes aka counterfeit US Currency. That’s what’s wrapped in plastic (above).

That’s your set up. The action begins and ends in New Orleans which is the USA’s largest and busiest shipping port. In between we have the middle section of the film set in Panama.