Oh, woe is Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell). I mean, sure, he lives in a traditional futuristic dystopian society where a massive war has left earth reeling and, sure, he has to commute from Australia to Britain every day (don't ask) for his crummy job putting together robots but, hey, Quaid! You get to wake up every morning in bed next to Kate Beckinsale (Lori)! KATE BECKINSALE! That's not enough?! You really wish your "life had turned out different"? Different than waking up every morning in bed next to Kate Beckinsale? Sorry, pal, but I've got no sympathy for you.
Now, I get it. Okay? I do. I get that this is not REALLY Quaid's life. I get that this life has been implanted in his memory and that Lori is not his wife but actually working undercover for the UFB (United Federation of Britain) since Quaid is not Quaid but Hauser, a spy for the obligatory Resistance which has risen up to fight back against UFB. So I get that Quaid is the Good Guy and Lori is the Bad Guy (Girl). I get that I am contracted to root for Quaid and root against Lori.
But this is a Kate Beckinsale movie. I don't watch Kate Beckinsale movies to root for Colin Farrell. I watch Kate Beckinsale movies to root for Kate Beckinsale. And once you get past "Total Recall's" apparent Anglophobia (notice how Kate Beckinsale only employs her English accent once she's revealed to be evil), it's easy to root for Kate Beckinsale. She glares out from behind her tortured bangs, often with a bloodthirsty smile that makes it seem as if she has sensual fangs. If you claim she is really bad at her job because Quaid/Hauser keeps escaping her clutches, well, you clearly don't understand this is all part of the games people play. Kate Beckinsale, see, is it in for the thrill of the chase. She coulda wrapped this ball of uninspiring CGI up in a cool 15 minutes but just took it a little too far and paid the price, though, rest assured, no one has ever paid the price with such elegance.
Having said all that, I regret to inform the less Kate Beckinsale-obsessed viewers that director Len Wiseman does virtually nothing with the concept of the possibility of our memories being implanted and instead decides to make his version of "Total Recall" (Paul Verhoeven's came first, as you might recall, with Arnie Schwarzenegger back in 1990) one extended chase scene.
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| Kate Beckinsale has very stylish boots. |
Except the chase is, like, soooooooooo boring, man. I am writing this less than ten hours after having seen it and I remember nothing aside from Kate Beckinsale's stylish 5th Avenue Boots. I don't know, there is a lot of punching and kicking and guns fired and evil robots and flying cars and this, that and the other, but it is all filmed with no imagination or wit and no desire to have it make visual sense for the viewer.
Come to think of it, this is the third Kate Beckinsale movie (along with "Van Helsing" and
"Underworld Awakening") that has briefly (literally) put me to sleep. That's a fairly significant problem.
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