Total Recall - 6/10
Ok, so its not a patch on the original but it's a reasonably fun way to spend a night. It's important not to go in expecting a film that's even remotely, even tonally close to the original and you'll probably get through it; it's not as much fun as the original, probably taking itself a little too seriously to be in the same league as the original. The director seems to be hell bent on to bring some originality to proceedings and it almost proves to be his undoing.
It's just a solid action film really. It's a little too long and the constant lens flare gives it the feel of a futuristic music video, however the direction is pretty good in places and the production design is good too.
Bill Nighy and Bryan Cranston ham it up quite a lot, and there's one exchange with Nighy and Farrell which is awful. Really, both Nighy and Cranston don't come out particularly well in this film. It's weird because the script is so pedestrian that it's quite hard to actually feel anything for any of the characters at all, so we never really get to a stage where we want either side to win. Other than that though, switch you brain off, suspend rather a lot of your disbelief and you'll find it to be a competent actioneer.
Seriously, this film is very close to making absolutely no sense what so ever but if you go with the flow it isn't bad.
