Curator Watchlist
A slick, competently mounted sci-fi action remake with strong production design and a few standout set pieces, but it largely trades the original’s wit, weirdness, and identity-crisis bite for a more generic chase thriller. Worth it if you want polished dystopian spectacle; less so if you want personality or a… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 1h 58m
Director: Len Wiseman
Starring: Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale
Factory worker Doug Quaid takes a virtual mind-trip vacation with the Rekall company, opting for implanted memories of being a spy. When the procedure goes wrong, Quaid becomes a wanted man by the police and joins forces with a rebel fighter to stop the evil Chancellor Cohaagen.
Len Wiseman
Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale
A slick, competently mounted sci-fi action remake with strong production design and a few standout set pieces, but it largely trades the original’s wit, weirdness, and identity-crisis bite for a more generic chase thriller. Worth it if you want polished dystopian spectacle; less so if you want personality or a fresh take on the premise.
This version of Total Recall is a sleek, high-budget chase machine that understands how to keep the screen moving. The future-world design is polished, the action is efficient, and the film has enough momentum to stay watchable even when the story feels borrowed from half a dozen better sci-fi thrillers.
Its biggest problem is that it sands off the very oddness that made the premise memorable in the first place. By grounding everything more heavily, it loses the original’s sense of delirium, humor, and destabilized identity, leaving behind a more conventional conspiracy thriller with a futuristic skin.
There are still pleasures here, especially in the physical commitment of the cast and the occasional burst of visual flair. But the movie rarely surprises, and for a story built on uncertainty and memory, that lack of imagination is hard to ignore.
xtini (1.5★) · 1524 likes
I saw this in the cinema when it was released, late 2012. It was a blind date with a guy called Aaron: we had some dinner before and a chat and then went and watched the film. When we were walking out after it had finished, he told me he thought it was better than the original. I never saw him again.
Grimbo (2★) · 594 likes
Souless remake that ignores all the great things from the original:- No Mars No Ricther No Benny No Kuato No one liners I heard that Kate Beckinsale steals the movie, she doesn't, she's as generic as everything else in this, and to waste Bryan Cranston is a sin!
Joe A (1.5★) · 459 likes
The definitive example of how “make it more grounded” can be a cancerous idea. Colin Farrell hot though, so there’s that.
David Sims (1★) · 338 likes
ah, another day riding The Fall on my way to my job at The Colony
DirkH (2★) · 319 likes
I went into this chanting the following mantra: "I shall not compare it to Verhoeven's classic film."Let's see how I got on. Wiseman's film is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's short story "We can remember it for you wholesale". And by loosely I mean it's actually not based on it at all. The only similarities to the story and this film are in the characters' names and the name of the company that alters memories. That's it. No… more
Shares the sleek near-future surveillance-state energy and a protagonist trapped inside a system that seems to know him better than he knows himself.
A more contemplative take on identity, memory, and manufactured reality, with striking world-building and a heavy atmospheric mood.
For viewers who want a stranger, more unsettling version of the “what is real?” premise with noir texture and strong visual invention.
A landmark of reality-bending action that delivers the kind of conceptual charge and iconography this remake largely avoids.
A body-horror spin on simulated reality that pushes the premise into weirder, more personal territory.
Another late-90s identity-and-reality thriller that explores artificial worlds with more philosophical curiosity.
For audiences drawn to layered reality, memory, and blockbuster-scale puzzle-box storytelling.
A polished, melancholy sci-fi adventure with similar sleek futurism and a more reflective tone.
A stylized dystopian action film that leans into controlled design, rebellion, and clean genre mechanics.
A lighter, romance-inflected conspiracy thriller about fate, control, and a hidden system shaping human lives.
A Philip K. Dick adaptation that plays with memory, prediction, and corporate intrigue in a straightforward thriller mode.
If the appeal is altered perception and identity instability, this offers a more haunting, more original approach.
memory manipulation, identity crisis, dystopian future, corporate control, conspiracy thriller, false reality, class divide, rebellion
sci-fi action, dystopia, mind control, memory implants, conspiracy, futuristic chase, remake, thriller, high-concept, visual effects