Sony has released the official synopsis of their new version of Total Recall, helmed by Underworld’s Len Wiseman, and with Colin Farrell taking on the role that Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous back in 1990.
Total Recall will be released in the US on 3 August 2012 and the 23 August 2012 in Australia from Sony.
Total Recall is an action thriller about reality and memory, inspired anew by the famous short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick. Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), even though he’s got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life – real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs. But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. Finding himself on the run from the police – controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), the leader of the free world – Quaid teams up with a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) to find the head of the underground resistance (Bill Nighy) and stop Cohaagen. The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred and the fate of his world hangs in the balance as Quaid discovers his true identity, his true love, and his true fate.
So it seems that not much will change in this update, with the possible exception of it not being set on Mars. Having watched the original filmed version quite recently, there are certain elements that don’t hold up, and they are not just the special effects kind. The basic story is still an intriguing one, and if writers Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback are able to elicit these sci-fi parts to add to the epic whole, we might be onto something. Mind you, between them their writing credits have been patchy, especially Wimmer who has the disastrous Milla Jovovich vehicle Ultraviolet to his name, along with the just plain terrible Law Abiding Citizen.
On the plus side, if it all goes wrong, they can just wipe our memories clean and do it all again in 22 years…
