Total Recall (2012)

You Don't Know Dick (Philip K.)
or
I Can Misremember It For Your Wholesale

The reviews that I've seen for the new version of Total Recall have not been kind.  Rotten Tomatoes, that fine aggregator/cuisinart of opinion, put it on "puree" when it said "While it boasts some impressive action sequences, Total Recall lacks the intricate plotting, wry humor, and fleshed out characters that made the original a sci-fi classic."

Huh?  What the wha...?

Maybe I'm in Rekall right now and this is all some elaborate alternate reality, but my vivid memories of the Schwarzenegger Total 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-Fi gore-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's Minority 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 (and "Die Hard 4")?  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.

Total Recall (2012) is a Total Cable-Watcher.

"But, I don't WANT to be in a bad Schwarzenegger movie!"

"Which one: Jingle All the Way or Last Action 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-breasted prostitute (probably because it's what the geeks remember...and want).  All of which will bring me to an up-coming point...

Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue (Stephan Elliott, 2008) Okay, it may be a weak recommendation to say this may be the best performance Jessica Biel has ever given, but she holds her own in a good cast that includes Kristin Scott Thomas (as a society woman who has seen far better days) and Colin Firth (the head of the household, who has only returned bodily from WWI), who are quite bent out of their stiff upper lips that their son (Ben Barnes) has married 1) an adventuress, 2) a race-car driver, 3) a widow, and 4) an (gasp!) American—all in the form of a comely Biel.

"What am I to do with this bauble of a woman?" fusses Mrs. Whittaker.  "Hang her?" says her barely-engaged husband.

The Noel Coward play has been filmed once before (by Alfred Hitchcock in 1928, during his silent era...consider that, a silent version of a Noel Coward play) and Elliott's version tries mightily to make it more hip, making Biel's Larita Whittaker more of a liberated woman, rather than just a libertine, and her inability to navigate the iceberg-laden chilly waters at the Whitaker residence (which, at their most hapless, resembles something that might appear in Meet the Parents) puts a strain on her puppy-loveish young marriage.

Try as she might to ingratiate herself into the family, it all turns perfectly horrid, with no help from her cluelessly entitled young husband (who thinks he can have it all, and can't fathom why everybody doesn't just get along).  Fact is, the Whittaker estate isn't so much a home as a castle, protecting itself from the cruelty of the outside world, and only those touched by that cruelty have the grace to rise above, if they can.  Larita gravitates to the unsmiling Mr. Whittaker for advice, his cynicism to keeping up appearances, coinciding with a wish she cannot fulfill for her husband's/his son's sake.

There has to be a better way, if not for the family then for herself.   What else can they do to her? 

Discover her secrets, maybe.

The two films diverge at this point: Hitchcock's hinges on a portrait done of Larita that colors her husband's death; Elliott's has that portrait, too (amusingly), but comes up with a more modern tragedy for Larita to cover up that wouldn't have "played" in the 20's, when Coward first wrote the play.  It gives the film a depth, and distinguishes Larita from the rest of the family-members, and leads to an inevitable conclusion—Coward's way out.

A truffle; a bon-bon; a bauble.  Easy Virtue has a grand time sending its message on the clash of the classes, filling it with period tunes (and ending with one out of period, but apt), and a cast making the most of Coward's words.  Not one to be dismissed.

The Illusionist (2008)

"The Illusionist" (Neil Burger, 2006) The other turn-of-the-century "magic" movie (the other being "The Prestige"), and although a much simpler story has a much more artful time in presenting its story. Filmed in the half-light sepia tone of a daguerrotype, it boasts fine performances by Edward Norton (probably the best actor of his generation, although he still rarely generates sympathy) and Paul Giamatti (whose purring formal police captain is far removed from the usual schlubs he plays--the guy has great range). Jessica Biel trades up from her role in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake, and Rufus Sewell makes a terrifically evil Prince Leopold. Worth seeing.