(no subject)
So, I think I mentioned a while ago that I was actually a little bit excited over the Total Recall remake. I've never seen the original, and didn't really have hopes that this one would be an actually good movie with, you know, "artistic value" or whatever. I did hope that it would at least be engaging, with enough special effects to draw you in for two hours and make you believe you're in a different world. And on this level, I wasn't disappointed.
One of the screenwriters for this movie was Kurt Wimmer, who also wrote Salt. I find that interesting because in some ways they're the same movie: they're about an Everyman who is suddenly accused of being an Action Hero and aren't sure if it's true or not. This leads them to question their own identities while kicking some serious ass, because, of course, they are action heroes in disguise--I mean, one's played by Colin Farrell and the other by Angelina Jolie, are they really going to be helpless bystanders? However, Salt took a very different approach to it: the suspense is artificial, as Evelyn Salt (yeah, that's her name) actually is a deep-cover agent and knows it, and has to work hard to conceal it from the audience for the first hour of the movie. In Total Recall, via the magic of the REKALL memory-shenanigans tech, we can assume that, while Douglas Quaid is indeed a spy in disguise, he's telling the truth when he claims any lack of knowledge over the situation.
Visually, the movie is stunning. The cinematography is crisp and clear, even during action sequences, failing to fall prey to the curse of the Jitter Cam. The visual design is great; there are a lot of panoramic vista shots of this used future, and all of them look convincing. The hovercars are kind of a throwaway gag, being used only in that one action sequence, but there's a number of other setpieces that more than satisfy.
What I wasn't expecting was for the movie to have good acting in it too. Now, before you clobber me, let me simply say that by "good acting" I mean "extant acting," as opposed to crap like The Expendables or Transformers where the stars don't even try to pretend they're important to the film. (Except Mickey Rourke.) But Colin Farrell does a pretty good job at working the confused-everyman angle (Ebert's rewiew claimed Schwartzenegger did a better job of it, though he acknowledged that Farrell is probably the better actor overall), and Kate Beckinsale actually made me believe she might know how to fake being a housewife for a while. One of the nice things about the movie is that there were no A-list actors involved. The problem with A-list actors is that their celebrity can overshadow their credibility; you don't expect to Tom Hanks play a role, for instance, you expect him to play himself. It makes for a good movie, but you simply don't believe he's acting. Will Smith and Tom Cruise are two more big names who do this, with lesser contenders including Christopher Walken, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Meg Ryan and Steve Buscemi (with Boardwalk Empire providing an exception). The Expendables had this problem as well. Total Recall doesn't; none of its are big names--medium-sized, all of them, but not big--and as a result they can disappear into their characters without bringing any real-life baggage with them. It works.
This is the season of movies I like best, honestly: all the second-string action flicks come out starting in August. We're getting the next Resident Evil movie, The Expendables 2 (which you better believe I will be seeing), The Bourne Legacy... These are the movies where people feel more free to experiment, because Hollywood isn't breathing down their necks. This is where the real work gets done. I'm looking forward to it.
One of the screenwriters for this movie was Kurt Wimmer, who also wrote Salt. I find that interesting because in some ways they're the same movie: they're about an Everyman who is suddenly accused of being an Action Hero and aren't sure if it's true or not. This leads them to question their own identities while kicking some serious ass, because, of course, they are action heroes in disguise--I mean, one's played by Colin Farrell and the other by Angelina Jolie, are they really going to be helpless bystanders? However, Salt took a very different approach to it: the suspense is artificial, as Evelyn Salt (yeah, that's her name) actually is a deep-cover agent and knows it, and has to work hard to conceal it from the audience for the first hour of the movie. In Total Recall, via the magic of the REKALL memory-shenanigans tech, we can assume that, while Douglas Quaid is indeed a spy in disguise, he's telling the truth when he claims any lack of knowledge over the situation.
Visually, the movie is stunning. The cinematography is crisp and clear, even during action sequences, failing to fall prey to the curse of the Jitter Cam. The visual design is great; there are a lot of panoramic vista shots of this used future, and all of them look convincing. The hovercars are kind of a throwaway gag, being used only in that one action sequence, but there's a number of other setpieces that more than satisfy.
What I wasn't expecting was for the movie to have good acting in it too. Now, before you clobber me, let me simply say that by "good acting" I mean "extant acting," as opposed to crap like The Expendables or Transformers where the stars don't even try to pretend they're important to the film. (Except Mickey Rourke.) But Colin Farrell does a pretty good job at working the confused-everyman angle (Ebert's rewiew claimed Schwartzenegger did a better job of it, though he acknowledged that Farrell is probably the better actor overall), and Kate Beckinsale actually made me believe she might know how to fake being a housewife for a while. One of the nice things about the movie is that there were no A-list actors involved. The problem with A-list actors is that their celebrity can overshadow their credibility; you don't expect to Tom Hanks play a role, for instance, you expect him to play himself. It makes for a good movie, but you simply don't believe he's acting. Will Smith and Tom Cruise are two more big names who do this, with lesser contenders including Christopher Walken, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Meg Ryan and Steve Buscemi (with Boardwalk Empire providing an exception). The Expendables had this problem as well. Total Recall doesn't; none of its are big names--medium-sized, all of them, but not big--and as a result they can disappear into their characters without bringing any real-life baggage with them. It works.
This is the season of movies I like best, honestly: all the second-string action flicks come out starting in August. We're getting the next Resident Evil movie, The Expendables 2 (which you better believe I will be seeing), The Bourne Legacy... These are the movies where people feel more free to experiment, because Hollywood isn't breathing down their necks. This is where the real work gets done. I'm looking forward to it.