10 Worst Film Remakes Since 2000

1. Total Recall

When Paul Verhoevens Total Recall opened in June 1990, it cost a whopping $70 million (making it the most expensive movie since Rambo III) and packed in more blood, gunfights and mind-bending ideas than any other film in a summer that included Robocop 2, Dick Tracy and Die Hard 2.

Jump forward two decades and this wet fart of a remake has taken the scissors to the original script, cutting out all the zingers, all the fun and most of the plot. So much story has been removed, and replaced by blah chase sequences, that all the life gets sucked out of the story. Jessica Biel suddenly appears, and theres a chase. Bill Nighy suddenly appears, and theres a chase. Bryan Cranston (criminally underused in the Ronny Cox role) appears, and blah blah blah.

Another disappointment is that the director is LenWiseman, who made an auspicious debut with Underworld (2003), followed it with Underworld Evolution (2006) and burst onto the Action Directors A-list with Live Free Or Die Hard (or Die Hard 4.0, if youre European), for our money the best Die Hard sequel. Total Recall has none of that movies verve or excitement (no free running Frenchman, either), and since weve literally seen it all before, done better, theres no reason to bother with this boring failure.