Review: "Total Recall"

I didn't think it was possible, but they've actually done a remake of "Total Recall" that is a less contemplative movie than the 1990 one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is not an insult.

This redo starring Colin Farrell is a slick and expensive-looking chase movie that never really lets up. It doesn't amount to anything more than one big long chase, so if you're looking for freaky-deaky ruminations about the metaphysics of implanted memories, you'd best move along.

But the actions scenes are crisply staged, Kate Beckinsale makes for one of the best female cinematic villains we've seen in a while, and the visual backdrop of the cramped, dystopian future is pretty ambitious -- even if director Len Wiseman did crib at least 75 percent of it from "Blade Runner."

The new "Recall"and the old are both based on Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," with both movies taking extreme liberties with that short story. Dick was a fecund talent who wrote about the intersection of technology and alienation, and his characters fretted constantly about whether their own thoughts were falsified or compromised by scientific "progress."

The first movie version, directed by Paul Verhoeven, was horrifically violent R-rated action/adventure built around the star persona of Schwarzenegger. The Austrian ironman had done a couple of comedies by then poking fun at (or making use of) his mechanical acting abilities and warped pronunciations, and that smirky tilt got folded into the mix. The film generated several of the most memorable "Arnie-isms" -- "See you at the party, Richter!" and "Consider that a divorce" being the most often quoted.

The remake diverges in many ways from the 1990 version -- no doubt you've heard about the most noticeable way, in that the action never takes our hero to the planet of Mars, his lifelong wish. But Wiseman and screenwriters Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback take pains to offer up several visual and dialogue cues as a nod to the first film.

The infamous three-breasted prostitute is here, and a certain big-boned woman with red hair is conspicuous at a security checkpoint. (I remember how strange and unlikely that idea seemed two decades ago -- being scanned and prodded and questioned, just to travel from point A to B. Now we accept it as a matter of course.)

Farrell also utters another Arnie line verbatim -- "If I'm not me, then who the hell am I?"

The basic setup is the same. Doug Quaid is a shmo blue-collar worker who dreams of traveling to Mars, but lacks the dough. He goes to a dream factory to have some memories of adventures as a secret agent implanted -- but something goes awry when their scans reveal he actually is a secret agent. Doug takes out an entire squad of police, then returns home to find his loving wife Lori (Beckinsale) is a plant tasked with watching over him.

Doug killed Lori in the first movie pretty quickly, but here she's turned into his tireless nemesis. Despite her willowy physique, Beckinsale is convincing as an acrobatic ass-kicker, and the relentless nature of her pursuit gives her an almost supernatural aura.

Instead of mutants on Mars, Doug fights for the rebels in The Colony -- once the nation of Australia but now once again a vassal of the English empire, reborn as the United Federation of Brittania. Most of the world is a toxic wasteland, the Brits need some elbow room, and the Colony has it.

Perhaps the most amazing feature of this world is The Fall, the only mode of transport between Europe and Australia. It's a massive elevator that passes right through the core of the Earth, with the gravity reversing itself halfway through. The first time we see this, we know it will be a plot point later on.

Also cool are the synthetic policemen, who sort of resemble Robocop if he'd become a dancer in "The Black Swan" and gone on a starvation diet. There's some subplot about a "kill code" that will instantly shut down all the robots at once, but we're not sure if that's a ruse or a part of Doug's false memories.

Jessica Biel plays Melina, a rebel girl who has a thing for Doug. Her character doesn't make as much of an impact as Beckinsale, but it does give an excuse for several girl-on-girl fight scenes, which the filmmakers happily obliging.

Bryan Cranston plays the head poo-bah of the Federation, and he cackles and snarls and taunts with obvious relish. This is the second movie this summer in which Cranston, who's become something of an acting demigod for his work on that TV show "Breaking Bad," plays a tawdry villain, and both are pretty one-note performances with a heavy pinch of schmaltz. Someone, please find this man better film roles, now!

Bill Nighy appears as the head of the resistance, and I'll save you the trouble of wondering by stating that he does not emerge from some other guy's potbelly.

The violence in this "Total Recall" is rather aesthetically pure in a decidedly PG-13-rated way. Both Farrell and Biel get kicked and punched in the face so much their heads should've swelled up to the size of watermelons, but instead they get a bunch of small facial cuts that bleed profusely and then disappear two scenes later. (Except for one on Doug's right ear that appears to be "sticky.")

Is this "Total Recall" decidedly better or worse than the other one? Not really. And I'll cop to missing Schwarzenegger's dominating, grinning, vowel-strangling presence.

But it's a fun, fast-moving story that will entertain and occasionally amaze you. That already puts it into the "save" pile, ahead of many other movies I'd like to be able to hit a button to forget.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Contraband"

A compact, tidy little heist thriller, "Contraband" took in a major score at the box office early this year, raking in $66 million on a budget of just $25 million. And it features Mark Wahlberg being so effective in a role tailor-made for him, as the cool confidence man, the underdog who keeps one step ahead of those looking to do him in.

I must confess that early in his career, I was not a fan of Wahlberg's thespian skills. Truth be told, I mocked him for his wooden line delivery and unyielding sour expression. But he's grown considerably as an actor over the years, and seems to have gotten smart about what sort of parts work best for him.

(As opposed to, say, Nicolas Cage, another talented performer who -- as The Onion recently pointed out -- seems to rely on a 12-year-old to choose his roles for him.)

Wahlberg plays Chris Faraday, a one-time expert smuggler who's decided to go straight. But he gets sucked by into that world when his brother-in-law dumps a large shipment of drugs after the authorities raid his boat.

The local crime boss (Giovanni Ribisi) insists that Chris cover the loss -- with the implicit threat that his wife and kids will pay if he won't -- and the only way to raise that kind of scratch quickly is to head to Panama on a counterfeiting scheme. Soon his neat little plan gets blown up, and Chris finds himself in a crazy web of intrigue, with threats looming on every side.

Loosely adapted from an Icelandic film, "Contraband" is tightly-wound and a great star showcase for Wahlberg.

Video goodies are decent enough without being ostentatious. There's a feature-length commentary track by director/producer Baltasar Kormákur -- who, curiously enough, was the star of the original film -- and producer Evan Hayes.

There are also two featurettes: "Under the Radar: The Making of Contraband" and "Reality Factor: The Stunts and Action of Contraband," plus a handful of deleted scenes.

Extras are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions, except the latter also includes a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Contraband"

Here's a tidy little heist/thriller starring Mark Wahlberg doing what he does best: Playing the lone wolf vying against the various forces arrayed against him. Lately Wahlberg's roles have gravitated more toward characters motivated to protect his family, rather than just watching his own back.

But once things get going, it's all about Wahlberg out-muscling and out-thinking his enemies. He specializes in playing the underdog who always seems to gain the upper hand.

"Contraband" is based, very loosely, on an Icelandic film about a smuggler, and is directed by Baltasar Kormákur, who was the star and one of the producers of the earlier movie. I admit I've never heard of the star of a foreign movie directing an American actor in the Hollywood remake. (Imagine Noomi Rapace tapped to helm the American version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.")

"Contraband" has misplaced aspirations toward something a little deeper, with a fine cast that includes Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Diego Luna and J.K. Simmons.

It's a rather large and motley crew of characters, good guys and bad guys and bad guys pretending to be good guys. Walberg is Chris Faraday, the lone good guy who plays at being a bad guy.

The former king of smugglers who went straight, Chris is lured/forced into the quintessential One Last Job when his young brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) screws up a shipment, tossing a batch of drugs overboard when his ship is interdicted. The local drug kingpin, Tim Briggs, is played by Ribisi, who has a flair for skeevy malevolence. Briggs makes it clear that unless Chris covers the loss, Faraday's family will be targeted.

Kate Beckinsale has the thankless role as the wife, Kate, whose job is to look pretty and vulnerable, try to talk Chris out of going back to crime, and never do anything logical. After Briggs invades her home, threatens her sons with a gun and drives a truck through her hair salon, you'd think Kate would've learned 9-1-1 on her keypad.

Instead, she turns to Chris' best friend Sebastian for help. A former partner in crime, Sebastian sets up Chris' job but doesn't accompany him on the trip to Panama. He's played by Ben Foster, who also does skeevy pretty well.

Just to show what a good bad guy Chris is, he refuses to smuggle drugs in order to pay back Briggs, opting instead to bring in counterfeit dollar bills. This presents a logistical nightmare, since the amount of funny money needed will practically fill its own storage container. But Chris is the master of subterfuge, nicknamed Houdini for his ability to slip past other criminals and the law.

On most any level of serious consideration, "Contraband" isn't a particularly good movie. Its plot twists telegraph themselves pretty clearly, and every performer other than Wahlberg is only afforded a few scenes to piece together any depth to their characters.

But darn it, I just couldn't help having fun. The action goes all over the place, so that at one point Chris gets recruited into a Panamanian armored car robbery -- the heist within the heist. (Actually, there's yet another layer of theft, which I'll leave the audience to discover.)

J.K. Simmons is a hoot as the truculent ship's captain, who's not so much offended that a known smuggler like Chris is running an operation on his boat as the fact that he wasn't cut in on the scam.

"Contraband" may not be anybody's idea of great filmmaking, but with its scene-stealing cast, a few clever potboiler scenes and another sturdy performance from Wahlberg, it left me pleasantly snookered.

3 stars out off our

Review: "Everybody's Fine"

"Everybody's Fine" is ... well, just fine.

This inoffensive but largely charmless drama is a remake of a well-regarded 1990 Italian movie, about a retired father whose adult children stand him up on a promised visit, so he travels to each of their far-flung homes to see them. Now the story has been transplanted to the States with all the quirky opera references removed (the Italian dad was a music buff who named his children Tosca, etc.).

Robert De Niro has done many things in his great career, but he's never played a total Average Joe like this, a man without any kind of strong personality traits or identity.

Frank Goode is like a million guys you see in their early golden years: Widowed, seemingly content but a little needy, who fills his days with quotidian distractions like mowing the lawn and chewing the fat with his butcher.

Frank's getting ready for a big family reunion at his house, but one by one the kids call to cancel. Not one to wallow in self-pity, he resolves to travel the country to see his four children -- and deliver cryptic letters to each of them.

He can't fly because of lung fibrosis due to decades of putting PVC coating on thousands of miles of telephone wire, so Frank goes the train and bus route. He takes pride in watching the wires he helped make go streaming by his window, bragging to a fellow passenger that it took a million miles of the stuff to pay for his kids' educations.

Those wires also carry the conversations of his children, who soon get wind of his "surprise" visits and conspire to keep him in the dark about the youngest sibling, David, an artist who's seemingly disappeared.

After missing David in New York, Frank sees Amy (Kate Beckinsale) in Chicago. She's a partner at a big advertising firm, and lives in an art deco mansion. All seems well, but there's some dark clouds between her son and husband.

This sets up the dynamic for all of Frank's visits, which involve his children avoiding him and lying about their life circumstances. Since he doesn't seem like a bad guy, we wonder why they would treat him so shabbily.

Robert (Sam Rockwell) plays percussion in an orchestra, which is great except that Frank had been led to believe he was the conductor. It's the same with Rosie (Drew Barrymore), who lives in a fab Las Vegas apartment and has a female friend with a baby with which his daughter seems overly familiar.

The film "Everybody's Fine" will remind most people of is "About Schmidt," a similarly-themed movie starring Jack Nicholson as a man navigating the straits between family man of business and lonely retiree.

Writer/director Kirk Jones ("Nanny McPhee") layers in moments of levity, gently poking fun at the middle-class values and foibles of people like Frank. He insists on taking photographs of Amy in front of her company's sign, and even takes a picture of the impressive big-screen TV in Rosie's guest bedroom.

It doesn't really add up to much, other than a drably pleasant protagonist struggling to narrow the distance he's inadvertently placed between himself and his offspring. Like Frank himself, who doesn't traffic much in introspection, "Everybody's Fine" has few depths to plumb.

2 stars