3. Total Recall
Total Recall 2012 arrives with three strikes against it: its rated PG-13, the script is co-written by Ultraviolets Kurt Wimmer and it has no use for the originals awesomely silly tag line, They stole his mind now he wants it back! Colin Farrell stands in for Arnie, and the filmmakers have tried to make the character a more credible Everyman than the Austrian Oak, but unfortunately thats led to them excising all the zingers, all the cartoonish mayhem and all the fun. Farrell still gets to perform superhuman stunts, but theres so much digital trickery involved that its all rather unexciting. So much plot has been removed, and replaced by blah chase sequences, that all the life gets sucked out of the story. Jessica Biel suddenly appears, and there;s a chase. Bryan Cranston (criminally underused in the Ronny Cox role) appears, and blah blah blah. Weve seen this approach to reimagining a popular classic before, but Michael Bays The Hitcher was a soulless abomination whose name shall not be spoken above a whisper for the love of God.