Rebel against relentless 'Total Recall'

Mind games: Colin Farrell stars as Quaid in the remake of 'Total Recall,' the role previously filled by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Credit: By Michael Gibson, Columbia Pictures)

Soulless, bombastic and numbingly repetitive, Total Recall (* * out of four, rated PG-13, opens Friday nationwide) is easy to forget within a few hours of watching.

Colin Farrell is a serviceable action hero in the lead role formerly inhabited in the 1990 original by Arnold Schwarzenegger. He plays it with a bit too much wide-eyed confusion, however, amid his many leaps and falls from buildings and en masse smackdowns. His nemesis, Lori, played by Kate Beckinsale, spends much of the movie strutting down hallways and looking relentlessly, though blandly, nasty. There's some hand-to-hand combat between them, but it's more frenetic than compelling.

Jessica Biel is the anti-Beckinsale — almost as bland, but good-hearted and on Farrell's side.

The production design is a highlight of this post-apocalyptic tale, but the interiors stand out more than the obviously computer-generated cityscapes.

The film's first third draws us in with an intriguing setup that doesn't deliver on its promise.

Farrell is Douglas Quaid, an assembly-line worker who goes into a mysterious underworld dive called Rekall for a recreational chemical implant to create fantasy memories to rev up his dull existence.

What he gets is far more than he bargained for in the deaths of 20 police officials who look as if they stepped out of a Star Wars movie. In a paranoid frenzy, he learns that his factory worker persona is fake — the result of implanted memories — and that his real identity as a secret agent has been replaced. Or has it? He's summoned into a hovering car by Biel's Melina, and the subsequent scene is the best of the too-numerous-to-count chases, since it's something new, with hover cars moving up, down and sideways and riding above and below roads.

Once Douglas and Melina are on the run from evil forces, the story devolves into tedium rather than building excitement.

There is some cool high-tech gadgetry, such as phone equipment implanted in the palms of hands and a rocketing commuter elevator that travels from one continent to another through the Earth's core.

Based on Philip K. Dick's dystopian short story, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, the film has Douglas becoming involved with resistance fighters, led by Mathias (Bill Nighy), and taking on the nefarious overlord Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston).

Paul Verhoeven's R-rated original involved Martians facing off against those who held them in tyranny. It also engaged in more mystery surrounding what was reality and what was implanted memory.

This humorless PG-13 remake, directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld), is less of a mindbender. It takes place on a bleakly stylized Earth, with a pair of mega-continents facing off. Mired in hectic, repetitive-looking special effects, it doesn't dazzle as much as look like a big-screen video game.

The key question takes a back seat to the relentless action sequences: Is Douglas suffering from a paranoid delusion, or was his memory replaced by nefarious forces? A tensely compelling scene involves a standoff with Douglas' work pal Harry (Bokeem Woodbine), who claims he's been injected into Douglas' memories to jolt him out of his delusion.

Instead of drawing the audience in, the action scenes merely blur together. And the intriguing, thoughtful concepts at the story's core are glossed over.

Total Recall is another remake that didn't need to be made.

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