Movie Review - Total Recall

Total Recall (2012) * * * *
Director: Len Wiseman
Starring: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston

From IMDB:
"A factory worker, Douglas Quaid, begins to suspect that he is a spy after visiting Rekall - a company that provides its clients with implanted fake memories of a life they would like to have led - goes wrong and he finds himself on the run."

My Thoughts:
Total Recall is, as I'm sure everyone is aware, a remake of a 1990 film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside, and inspired by a short story written by Philip K. Dick.

In the original film, Douglas Quaid ends up on Mars and saves the red planet from a maniacal overlord.  It's campy and comedic as often as it is serious, and for its' time the technology was breathtakingly imaginative.

The remake however, goes a different way.  It's serious through and through, the technology is still awesomely inventive (a hand-phone? Yes PLEASE, sign me up!), but it's grittier and darker, and completely Earth-bound.  The special effects were very well done (I loved the "weightless" scene), and overall the movie is visually stunning.  Colin Farrell did a better acting job than I expected, and Kate Beckinsale shines (as she usually does - no surprise there) as Quaid's "fake" wife. 

My problems with the movie were that I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief throughout several sections of the film (Elevator through the Earth's core?), and that I kept comparing it to the original in my mind while watching it.  But overall I do think it was a good film, it was loads of fun, and told a fantastic spy/mystery story.

But I did kinda miss Mars a little bit.

Have you seen Total Recall yet?  What were YOUR thoughts about the film?