Philip K. Dick had a brain full of odd but wonderful ideas. Unfortunately, the cinema has not always been kind to them. Possibly the best example of taking one of his stories and running with it is "Blade Runner," but the list of truly admirable efforts kinda stops there.
"Minority Report" was a special effects-laden snore, "Next" was so horribly miscast that it was near to impossible to focus on its good points, and "Paycheck" barely even deserves to be mentioned. The only film made from a PKD film that I thought was pretty good was the little-seen 2001 "Impostor," and that was mainly because Gary Sinise was tremendous in it. As for the first film based (loosely) on PKD's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," that was actually kinda enjoyable because Ahnold's general cluelessness and constant "I'm out of my depth here" acting fit what his character was going through. It's a challenging thing discovering that you're not who you thought you were, and Ahnold almost pulled that off in the 1990 version of "Total Recall." The new 2012 version keeps a little of PKD's original plot, the image of a woman with three breasts, and even throws in a clever in-joke reference to the previous film (if you see it, there is a scene where Douglas Quaid/Hauser is going through a checkpoint scanner, and the woman in front of him in line is the same woman from the 1990 film). The new film loses the whole Mars thang (and good riddance) and replaces it with an Earth devastated by chemical warfare, with only two livable areas -- the UK and Australia. They are connected by some sort of tunnel mechanism that serfs from the UK are required to hop into to commute through the Earth to work in The Colony. It's called The Fall, presumably because it sorta falls through the Earth and comes up on the other side. The fact that the other side of the Earth from the UK is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and not in Australia shouldn't cause you any disbelief -- this is science fiction, remember, and you're supposed to "suspend disbelief" while watch- ing it. Bzzzzzzzt. That's exactly what is wrong with the 2012 "Total Recall." You have to suspend disbelief FAR too much, because so little of it makes sense. Good science fiction is internally consistent, and even if it makes up new rules for the environment it imagines, it has to stay true to them, and try to make them *at least* be slightly plausible. Simply not happening in the new version. It's basically a non-stop action film, a kind of video game on steroids, aimed (one must assume) at the kind of adolescent audience (it *is* rated PG-13, after all) who have rotted their brains away by staring at computer screens and trying to kill as many video bad guys as possible. You're not supposed to notice that much of the action is physically impossible, and that heat and G-forces would have turned our hero into something looking a lot like strawberry jam in the first reel. Colin Farrell is earnest and in some films, given enough to "chew on" as an actor to demonstrate it. This is not one of those films. Kate Beckinsale does a good job of being a bitch, and Jessica Biel does a good job of what she's good at -- being beautiful. Bryan Cranston is all but wasted in the part of Cohaagen. He probably took the role because he could fly in for a couple of days and shoot all of his scenes and then go back to "Breaking Bad," and quite frankly, he might have been able to deliver a better performance (given the lines he had to deliver) by staying home and *literally* phoning in his performance. Was there anything GOOD about the movie? Absolutely. If you're into non-stop action, and don't want much else in a movie, this is your movie. The sets are stunning, in a "Blade Runner" kind of way, and create fascinating visions of both the UK and Australia in this not-so-happy future era. For many people, this would be enough. For me, not so much. And I have to believe that Philip K. Dick himself is turning in his grave right about now, thinking "Oh NO! Not another one. What is so hard about taking a minor masterpiece and just trans- lating it to the screen, without trying to 'improve' it by dumbing it down?" I shudder to think what Hollywood is going to do with the upcoming "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" and "Ubik." The latter -- a science fiction novel based on the Tibetan Book Of The Dead -- deserves a faithful translation to the screen. I think we all know that it isn't going to get one.
