1990 was something. The dawn of the last decade of the 20th century, the internet was slowly growing and Arnold Schwarzenegger  was the star to beat. His movies were gigantic, including a little flick called Total Recall.  22 years later, Columbia Pictures saw it fit to give it a redo, with snazzy new effects, ditching Mars and getting an admirable cast to saddle up for the project. So is this movie a total wreck…or are my memories of it positive ones?

Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell) is an average factory worker with odd dreams that revolve around him being a powerful secret agent. Wanting to have these experiences as actual memories, he decides to give a visit to Rekall, a place that can give you memories. Unfortunately, a malfunction at Rekall results in a secret from Doug’s past coming back to haunt him. The only problem?  He doesn’t remember his own past! With the help of a woman named Melina (Jessica Biel), he hopes to find the truth about his own past, and perhaps take down the corrupt government run by Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston)

The biggest problem with Recall is it doesn’t aim to do anything that is great, and fails at that. It never hits the level of bad that Battleship or Rock of Ages did, but it never rises above mediocrity despite all the talent involved. Director Len Wisemann does decent business here, but fails at finding anything new or even cool about the plot that wasn’t covered sufficiently in the 1990 original. There are a few nice set pieces; I liked the main transportation used, The Fall, and a fight in zero gravity is awesome. However, \ the film mostly lumbers along, never doing anything really that surprising or fun. Like Battleship, there’s just so much action that you become numb to it after two hours. Instead of being exhilarated, you are numb to anything they throw at you thanks to the barrage of pointless fistfights.

Colin Farrell is okay doing Arnold’s character, but he doesn’t really do anything substantially good or bad for any true recognition (just like the movie!).  Bryan Cranston does okay with the bad guy, but he isn’t seen much and I feel like he should’ve been used more thanks to the amount of talent Bryan truly has. Jessica and Kate Beckinsale play the two leading ladies and neither do very much interesting besides fighting and sending off expository dialogue. Bill Nighy cameos as the leader of a very muddled and poorly explained resistance. Bill is a good actor, but between this and Wrath of The Titans, he really needs to pick better movies to show up in.

I did like some of those fight scenes (again, that zero-g sequence was phenomenal) and I liked some of the designs of this futuristic world. There’s isn’t much I actively disliked in Total Recall, but the big problem is there wasn’t much I did like! Movies need to try better in an era of Avengers and high ticket prices and Total Recall doesn’t cut it at all. Maybe the only thing this mediocre movie will be known for is being one of the first flicks to have dubstep in its musical score.