New ‘Recall’ is a lot of flash, lacks wits

BY ROGER MOORE
MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE

The almost non-stop chase of the new “Total Recall” isn’t enough, by itself, to make one forget the earlier take on this Philip K. Dick story back in the last century. And for all the effects, the action and the showcase performance provided for his wife, Kate Beckinsale, Len Wiseman never lets us forget that he’s no Paul Verhoeven, who directed the original film.

Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct”) brought a demented, visceral and sexual energy to a high-minded sci-fi “B” movie saddled with the Teutonic bore, Arnie Schwarzenegger, as his star. His “Recall” is remembered for images, jokes and jolts in between the effects. Wiseman doesn’t have Verhoeven’s (limited) inventiveness, his kinky and wicked wit.

But he does have Beckinsale, whose years of vampire pictures have taught her the right level of sneer to slip into her open-mouthed hypersexual pout. Here, she’s the villain, the adoring wife Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell) thinks he’s been waking up to these past seven years. And she’s terrific.

We’re 100 years in the future. Memories can be invented, introduced, changed, bought and sold.

“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” was the title of the story this is based on. And the folks at Rekall are all about tinkering with your memory, your reality. “Tell us your fantasy, we’ll give you the memory,” a Rekall guru (John Cho) purrs. “What is life but our brain’s perception of it?”

Exactly. It’s a measure of this movie’s mediocrity that the many credited screenwriters and the director cannot make more of that possibility. We never are made to doubt Doug’s reality, any more than he does.