Total Recall Reviews
Top Critic'Total Recall' is Hollywood at its worst: pointless, witless, and so very unnecessary.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
"Total Recall" is a toned-down, smoothed-out version of an amped-up, bug-eyed classic.
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| Original Score: 2/4
This is a taut, serviceable sci-fi thriller with a couple of neat visual ideas, and if you're not familiar with either the Schwarzenegger version or the original story, the brain-bending twists alone will take you a reasonably long way.
Casting and visuals are an upgrade, but we get far too many action sequences and not enough of the mind games.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
I was no particular fan of the first Total Recall, but I confess that this flat, by-the-numbers remake made me a tad nostalgic for its bombastic preposterousness.
Whatever tug Total Recall has on the imagination comes from the vague sense we've seen it all before. And seen it better: from Christopher Nolan's Inception to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Director Len Wiseman is good on action, and Patrick Tatopoulus's dystopic production design is within hailing distance of Blade Runner, his chief influence. But essentially this is a big-screen video game.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Where Paul Verhoeven's original was testosterone-stupid and, therefore, fun, Wiseman's film is just boring-stupid.
Farrell is confident and competent regardless of the situation; there never seems to be any real threat of him coming out alive.
Those who buy a ticket to Total Recall may not go in expecting a generic Bourne sequel, but that's about what they'll be getting - just set in a Blade Runner universe made of giant gray Lego blocks.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
The effects look great, but is that even worth noting when smart high-schoolers can make monsters on their laptops? What movie's effects don't look great these days?
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Today's Total Recall does nothing to tarnish the image of yesterday's - 22 years from now, I expect it to be hailed as a classic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
If you share its desire for straight adrenaline, the ride works.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
I kept thinking: "Yes, that was surprising to me in 1990."
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
While it may not be a fully realized take on Dick's forward-thinking work, it's still a far better film than the Verhoeven version.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
For all of its dazzlingly rendered cityscapes and nonstop action, this revamped "Total Recall" is a bland thing - bloodless, airless, humorless, featureless. With or without the triple-bosomed prostitute.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The fun is fun while it lasts, it just doesn't last long enough.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Wiseman directs his film as if it's a shark... But really, it's more of a carp, shiny and pretty but fat and dopey, fed on nothing but scavenged leftovers.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
The remake has no grace notes, or grace, no nuance, no humanity, no character quirks, no surprises in the dialogue and no humor ...
The new Total Recall is a series of set pieces whose CGI environments trump narrative logic.
Strip away the video-game visual effects, the endless chases and zero gravity shootouts, and Total Recall comes down to this: What is reality?
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
"Total Recall" is a doggone good time, with a bunch of nifty technical and visual flourishes, competently managed plot twists and elegant, Wachowski-esque action choreography ...
This premise contains the seeds of an interesting economic and political allegory, but the ambitions of the filmmakers - Len Wiseman directed a script by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback - lie in the direction of maximum noise and minimum sense.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
There's plenty to excite the eye, but the mind remains unboggled. It's all visuals and no vision.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
The new Total Recall fails on the most basic levels: Its characters are dull, and its action is duller.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
There's something sadly poetic about a movie dealing with disappearing memories that vanishes from your mind while you watch it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
In the end, here's the worst sin of this slick, high-octane memory play: It's forgettable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The Total Recall reboot is a futuristic fiasco, two hours you'll never get back - and every minute is a bad memory.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Engaging enough, although not entirely satisfying from either a genre or narrative standpoint, lacking both substance and a degree of imagination.
Questions, questions nip at Len Wiseman's Total Recall like so many rats at the feet of a sleeping hobo. The big Why is Why bother?
The new version, with its humorless dialogue and Farrell's smoldering performance, suffers from a self-seriousness that undercuts any genre pleasures. But the action is thrilling and the futuristic setting superbly realized.
Crazy new gadgets, vigorous action sequences and a thorough production-design makeover aren't enough to keep Total Recall from feeling like a near-total redundancy.
Wisemen's film is a soulless mess, reminiscent of the unwatchable "Matrix" sequels, while Verhoeven's movie remains a dazzling carnival.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The talented and fiercely physical Biel's musculature is more expressive than most of the dialogue.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
"Total Recall" is well-crafted, high energy sci-fi. Like all stories inspired by Philip K. Dick, it deals with intriguing ideas. It never touched me emotionally, though, the way the 1990 film did, and strictly speaking, isn't necessary.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Like a novelty cover band, Wiseman's "Total Recall" [goes] through a checklist of "things you have to do if you do a 'Total Recall.'"
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
It's big and it's loud, but ultimately not much more than that.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
One of the great advantages of remaking a movie is being given the opportunity to correct problems - something not attempted here.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
After a rousing setup, this visually striking remake falls back much too heavily on its action roots, with one chase scene after another and another. After a while, it's tedious.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
