Total Recall: Too Much Lens Flare and Not Enough of John Cho’s Hair

Your classic John Cho: safe, predictable, and reliable.

Total Recall reboot. Let’s face it, you already have an opinion. Whether you’ve seen it or not you probably already know how you feel about this remake of the 1990 Arnold cult classic.

So let’s talk about John Cho instead.

I started watching the 2012 Total Recall and wasn’t really invested until John Cho appeared on screen. Usually, when John Cho is in a movie, I’m not paying too much attention to his outfits. He’s usually dressed in some variation of prepster, looks-good-in-a-suit-but-not-like-Neil-Patrick-Harris-good outfit. Safe and practical, like the characters he normally plays.

Hello, nurse. How you doin?

All that aside, Total Recall changed my opinion of John Cho’s potential as a sex symbol. Because  John Cho looks hot in this movie. Like way hot. And he’s not even trying; it’s effortless. As a John Cho fan from the beginning, when he was a nerdy teacher birthing a catchphrase in American Pie, I was unprepared for the effect John Cho as a bottle blond would have on my libido. But the second the smarmy Rekall salesman McClane showed up with spiky blond hair and tight, wispy, goatee I was all “Hello.” Then I thought, “Wait, is that John Cho?” John Cho took a page out of Samuel L. Jackson’s wig-acting playbook and man, did he run with it. So John Cho, if you’re reading this, you should do more wig acting. And if you’re ever in my area, let me buy you a beer sometime.

Sadly for me John Cho gets killed before the end of the first hour, and the movie never recovers. While the film is very pretty to look at and is filled with a lot of pretty people, casting John Cho is the highlight of the film’s surprises. For two hours and twelve minutes (I watched the extended director’s cut) I am painfully aware that I’m watching a movie from 2012, with all the over reliance on lens flare, blue/teal color palettes, and bloodless deaths that entails. Kate Beckinsale is a badass (and a much-improved amalgamation of Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside), but her menace is lost when all she does is kill people off screen. Ditto the nod to the elevator scene in the original, which is totaly bloodless thanks to Bryan Cranston’s robot army.

I will totally watch Star Trek 3 if they make Sulu a blond

Here was my biggest problem with Total Recall (besides the fact it probably shouldn’t have been made in the first place): the excellent cast is wasted on a messy plot that spends too much time calling back to the 1990 film than developing its own plot. (To be fair, the various callouts and Easter Eggs never reach absurd Star Trek Into Darkness levels are are some of the movie’s high points.) The movie feels like a cash grab; halfway through the film I found myself enjoying it (despite the lack of blond John Cho by that point) and thought it should have been called anything other than Total Recall. There’s enough plot differences between this and the 1990 film that the film feels somewhat fresh…if the title didn’t hamper the movie with all the expectations a remake brings. (Never again with their be so much speculation about whether or not a movie will feature a triple-breasted woman.) When I could forget that I was watching a remake I enjoyed the movie a whole lot more. Too bad all the lens flare never let me forget I was watching a movie made more for money than risk. Sorry, Total Recall; I really wanted to like you. But at least we’ll always have John Cho.

tl;drs

Blank is a blanker version of blank: Total Recall is a flashier, more emotionally dead version of…well, Total Recall.

Screen credits over/under: Over. Way over. Twelve people share credit for this movie, between the screenwriters and everyone with “story by” credit.

Recommended if you like: If you like the direction action movies have taken in the past few years, then this movie is for you.

Better than I expected: The nods to the original movie were nice touches and kept me engaged long after I stopped caring about the plot.

Worse than I hoped:. I watched the extended director’s cut, which included crucial plot points (and Ethan Hawke). I can only imagine the PG-13 movie released in theaters was a hot mess.

Total Recall would work better as a(n): any other Philip K. Dick adaptation. Seriously, the dude was prolific; there’s no reason to mine the “We Can Remember it For You Wholesale” well again so soon.

Verdict: This is one of those movies everybody prejudged when they heard about its release and no amount of praise will sway you one way or the other. But if for no other reason, see it for John Cho’s hair. John Cho as a blond is something I think we as a people can support.