Rated R

In the future, most of the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by chemical warfare, and all the remaining humans are crammed into two zones, one in what had been Great Britain, and one in what had been Australia. The two areas are connected by an improbable but novel tunnel that shoots straight through the center of the planet, enabling poorer workers in the Australia zone (called “The Colony”), to commute to their factory jobs in the wealthier United Federation of Britain.

Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) is one such worker, discouraged by his unchanging place in life and troubled by bad dreams. In an effort to alleviate his ennui in this crowded, dirty world, he goes to a place called Rekall which offers to implant exciting, fictional but good-as-real memories straight into his head. In Quaid’s case, he chooses to find out what it would be like to be a spy.

Before the procedure can be completed, however, it all goes wrong, a bunch of armed men assault Rekall and Quaid is forced to flee, using a set of crazy fighting skills he didn’t know he had. Is he really a spy after all, or is this all a tricky Rekall memory being played out? Either way, everyone is trying to kill him now, even the woman who he thought had been his loving wife, Lori (Kate Beckinsale), and Quaid must run and jump his way to the truth like a crazed squirrel on meth.

“Total Recall” is, of course, a remake of the 1990 film of the same name with ArnoldSchwarzenegger, which was a darn exciting movie at the time, but hoo boy, it sure has not held up well. Why did anyone ever, ever think it was a good idea to give Arnold speaking lines? In that sense, this was a film ripe for a remake, and the 2012 version comes off as very shiny in comparison. Everything is better, faster, more luscious and even more credible than the 1990 version. Farrell, especially, is wildly more believable as a human being who has emotions and thoughts than Arnold ever was, even as governor. Taken together, the two movies make a nice clean core sample of how filmmaking has changed over the last 22 years.

Well, sort of.  While 2012’s “Total Recall” is much more visually sophisticated than its predecessor, the movie it really looks like is “Blade Runner,” which was made without a lick of computer animation. Yes, many movie-futures have a lineage that goes back to Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic, but for this one it is more than a passing resemblance: crowded street scenes full of umbrellas and rain, dirty tenements reaching into the sky while huge luminous billboards light up the night, and most especially the sense of a future in which the past still exists, so even as the characters fiddle with high technology, they may be doing it against a backdrop of antique architecture. The hovercars in the two films are cut from the same design cloth, and there is even a piano scene in both, in which characters test their implanted memories. Oh, right—both movies are about implanted memories. What are the odds?

“Total Recall” does a great job with the “Blade Runner” theme, creating a lush world which is fascinating to see; so, it’s better than 1990, but only succeeds in re-creating the quality of 1982. Is that progress?

There’s nothing wrong with showing your influences, but once we’ve cracked that open, it’s impossible to miss how much the running/jumping action in this movie owes to the “Bourne” films.

Again, one can say that about many films, but it’s especially apparent here since, well, both films are about super spies with repressed identities rediscovering their powers and trying to uncover the truth.

And when the squads of white synthetic soldiers march in formation, they sure do look like Stormtroopers. Well, not up close, when you are punching their mechanical bits—that’s much more like fighting a Terminator.

Is it a movie, or is it Rekall? Take a set of stock memories (movie elements) which have been proven over time, and fold them together into a narrative which itself has an effective track record, then package it into an entertainment which we’ll pay to have implanted into our minds (via our eyeballs), in order that we might forget who we are for a little while.

Which doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea. Farrell really is fun to watch, and his uncertainty over who he is and what he should do draws us in. Beckinsale’s character, meanwhile, hunts him mercilessly and with a chilling malice that clicks uncomfortably well with her ex-wife status. It’s nice to see “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston as the big bad, too, even though his character doesn’t make much sense. Glowing tattoos are a great idea, and we can’t wait for them to become available commercially.

It’s not a perfect movie, but at least there are some good memories.