Total Recall

Len Wiseman’s remake of the Paul Verhoeven film Total Recall (1990) with Colin Farrell replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role of Doug Quaid, based on the Philip K. Dick short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966) is a worthy kinetic Sci-Fi Action Adventure film. 

A factory worker, Quaid, living in the underworld of a worker colony, commutes to work every day in the United Federation of Britain (UFB) on the other side of the planet by way of a global magnetic elevator transport vehicle that travels through the earth’s core. 

Beautifully designed by director Wiseman, known for the Underworld movies, with a blend of futuristic and classical architecture, it shows an over populated dreary world of multi-layered cities connected with industrial landing platforms and super highways used by an array of hovering and flying vehicles. 

Suffering from strange dreams of being a secret agent, he decides to go on a virtual vacation by way of a machine that implants artificial memories of being somewhere you’ve always wanted to go. As part of this mind altering vacation you also get to give yourself a new identity.  

The visual design of the film looks much more impressive than the original Paul Verhoeven film, which was a tongue-in-cheek humorous look at the future. This new film creates a more immersive and realistic mix of sleek futuristic technology, Victorian inspired architecture and grungy cube shaped slum dwellings with retro style neon lights. There is a definite visual homage to previous films based on Philip Dick’s books like Blade Runner (1982) and Minority Report (2002), and I got a similar feeling of a dark oppressive future world that you get from those films. 

What Quaid is not aware of, is that his mind has already been tampered with and that his dreams of being a secret agent are actually real memories left over from another life he lived as, Carl Hauser, a defected UFB spy. 

There is sort of a Logan’s Run (1976) feeling you get from the story of a special agent who has been tricked into taking a mission because of his unique talents making him the only one suited for the job.  He is partnered with a female insider who can help him navigate the underworld of the resistance as they travel through a maze of unique environments eventually leading the authoritarian forces to the secret hideout of the rebels.

There are quite a number of exciting, fun sequences that give the film its relentless drive and keeps the viewer engaged in the story. There’s a suspenseful chase in a labyrinth of elevators that move in multiple directions, a floating car chase through a multi-leveled cityscape that’s visually breath taking, a rooftop chase through the slums of a worker colony that looks like a future Hong Kong, and a climactic supersonic magnetic transport vehicle, called ‘The Fall’, that runs through the earth’s core from one end to the other in just 17 minutes.

If you’re a fan of Philip Dick’s mind altering, conspiracy fueled, surreal future world stories, then you won’t be disappointed with this film, which stays true to the spirit of Dick’s ideas. If however you were a fan of Paul Verhoeven’s lighter hearted take on the story, you may not enjoy this film as much. The whole trip to Mars element has been eliminated and although there are some fun nods to the original film, the humor is definitely lacking in this more serious but engaging updated remake. 

JP

Looper

Finally an intelligent, thought provoking Sci-fi movie along the same lines as The Adjustment Bureau (2011) and Source Code (2011). A time travel brain teaser set in a dark dystopian near future world that looks like a mix of Blade Runner (1982) and 12 Monkeys (1995), which also starred Bruce Willis. 

Gun totting assassins called ‘Loopers’ are well paid to kill people sent back in time from 30 years in the future by a criminal syndicate who need to dispose of people without leaving a trace.  An unusual fate awaits these hit-men once they have outlived their usefulness. Their future self will get sent back in time to be killed by their younger self in the past; this is called closing the loop. They then have only 30 years to live out the remainder of their life.

In the time honored time travel tradition of Back to the Future (1985), Looper plays on the connection of how the past shapes our future, but with an interesting twist. Taking the premise from the fascinating Michael Apted documentary The 7Up Series (1964 - 2012), which asserts that our personalities are already set by events that shape our lives at age seven, Looper uses this intriguing idea surrounding a mysterious six year old boy who is born with a special ability that he uses in his later adult life for evil purposes.

A young looper, Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, recently seen in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), 50/50 (2011) and Inception (2010), living a life of excess with the loads of money he makes from the mob, is addicted to drugs and prostitutes, to take the edge off all the killing. Eventually he realizes that in order to prevent his future from coming back to haunt him, he must stop the vicious cycle in the present.

This is a Sci-Fi film that looks more like a futuristic action gangster film and will appeal to people who are not necessarily into Science Fiction but enjoy a suspenseful action thriller. There’s a bleak apocalyptic feel to it as the future looks more like a nightmare. Clearly our selfish obsession with money and consumerism will continue to have a devastating impact on our future population and world as it does today.

When a new crime boss called ‘The Rainmaker’ decides to close the loop on all the loopers in the future by sending them back in time to be executed, Joe is forced to kill his future self and lives out the rest of his thirty year life. But when they finally come for him and murder his wife, he uses the time machine to travel back to his younger self with the intention of changing a few things. Believing that his future wife can be saved if he eliminates The Rainmaker, who is taking over the crime syndicates, he plans to find him in the past where he is still only a six year old boy. 

What if we could go back in time and eliminate the young Hitler before he formed all his hateful ideas and influenced so many people to follow him, thus sparing history the Second World War. Knowing what we know of the past we would not hesitate to kill him, sparing the lives of millions of people. But what if the young boy Hitler was only 6 years old and could not be killed? At this age, according to the Jesuit motto; ‘Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man’, all it would take to change the future is the love and influence of a caring adult.

As young Joe and old Joe meet, they battle each other over the boy’s destiny and that of their own. 

JP

Zero Dark Thirty

Osama Bin Laden was brought down by a woman!  One woman working for the CIA, who lost many friends and did everything in her power to keep the hunt for the most wanted man alive going, managed to find his hideout even though there was no conclusive evidence that he was there. 

Directed by the first woman in history to win a Best Director Oscar for the movie The Hurt Locker (2009), Kathryn Bigelow’s new film is a detailed account of how Bin Laden’s hideout was finally discovered after ten years of gathering intelligence. 

Are you curious about why it took so long to find the most wanted man on earth, the man responsible for the 911 terrorist attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives? Or how he was ultimately found? This movie answers those questions. It’s not quite as exciting as the bomb defusing squad movie The Hurt Locker, but the last forty minutes of Zero Dark Thirty that shows the secret operation going into Pakistan to raid Bin Laden’s compound is mesmerizing. 

The movie depicts our self-assured heroine, Maya, in conflicts and rivalries with various department heads and colleagues within the CIA organization. She has extensive knowledge of the enemy and is an expert in Al-Qaeda’s tactics. But when a false lead turns tragic, she becomes even more determined to see Bin Laden brought to justice. Jessica Chastain is well cast as the confident but vulnerable CIA agent who will stop at nothing to get what she needs, and has been nominated for an Oscar for her role in this movie. 

Filmed in a documentary style, we are immersed in the high security world of CIA agents in the field and their interrogation tactics at ‘black sites’, or unknown locations around the world, punctuated by terrorist bombings in public locations and the real threat that Al Qaeda poses as fanatical suicide bombers quickly adapt and take advantage of lapses in security. 

We all know how this story ends but what’s interesting is how it gets there and how after years of interrogations and bad leads due to human error, it finally comes down to some lucky breaks, a hunch, and one woman’s determination.  The story is in the details. 

We have all read and heard about the Special Forces team that flew into hostile territory with helicopters in the dead of night and quickly broke into a highly secured walled compound, identifying and extracting the body of Osama Bin Laden while everyone slept. This film shows us in detail how that operation actually went down and the courageous woman who was behind it. 

Don’t miss this inspiring film about one of the most important events in recent history by one of our most exciting film makers. 

JP

Silver Linings Playbook

This is a hilarious romantic comedy that’s also a smart family drama by the director of The Fighter (2010). As the winner of the People’s Choice Award at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), it’s a huge crowd pleaser and continues to win awards. In fact, at the packed house theater where I saw it recently it was very enthusiastically received. 

A young married man struggling with bipolar disorder, Pat Solatano, from a loud family of Philadelphia Eagles fans, spends eight months in a psychiatric facility following a violent attack on his wife’s lover when he walked in on them having sex in their home. When the film starts he’s just being released and determined to be more positive and repair his relationship with his wife by proving that he’s a new person, except that everyone in town now think he’s crazy and he can’t go near his wife due to a restraining order. 

Although the movie does have some formulaic story elements, what makes this particular comedy unique is that it brings together the passionate world of fanatical football fans, and the graceful world of ballroom dancing, which somehow collide in a spectacularly funny but emotional climax. This clash of masculine and feminine sports makes this movie appealing to both men and women, and there are not many films you can say that about. 

Having lost his job and house, Pat must move back in with his parents who are disappointed but supportive and try to make every effort to help him with his anger issues while he sorts out his life. Much of the humor comes out of the family dynamic as Pat adjusts to living with his eccentric parents while trying to stay positive. 

There is quite a bit of manipulation going on in the film that we the audience are not aware of until close to the end, which makes the climax even more of a surprise and has you wondering what just happened but we are having so much fun that we don’t feel cheated. It’s a bit like The Sixth Sense (1999) in the sense that part of the fun is the sudden discovery of who has been manipulating who. 

When he meets a beautiful young woman, Tiffany, with problems of her own dealing with the death of her husband, they have an immediate connection as far as their experiences overcoming a recent tragedy.  She offers to help him get a message to his wife if he agrees to help her get into a dance contest. 

There are many family dysfunctional issues touched upon that all ring very true to life and the same can also be said of the terrific performances by the ensemble cast. The chemistry between Pat and Tiffany, played by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, in situations that many of us can relate to, makes us care and cheer for them throughout the film. 

With the hope of communicating with his wife, Pat agrees to help Tiffany and ends up spending a lot of time getting to know intimate details about her and vice versa, but when his demanding family gets in the way of his commitment to helping Tiffany, things come to a head with surprising revelations that set the stage for the suspenseful climax. 

This film also reminded me a bit of Lars and the Real Girl (2007), which I highly recommend, where with the help of a psychiatrist and the small community he lives in, a young man eventually overcomes deep psychological issues. Similarly, Silver Linings Playbook is a wonderful feel-good film you won’t regret seeing. 

JP