By Vivian Fullerlove – [email protected]
One of Hollywood’s best imports, hunky Colin Farrell, stars in the reboot of the action adventure film Total Recall. Farrell reprises the role of Douglas Quaid, made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1990. Colin sat down to talk about the movie and how it provided the most uncomfortable moment of his film career thus far.
What attracted you to this film?
When I saw the artwork and the concept, when I read the script, I went, “This is something that I really want to see.” This is a world I wanted to be taken to.
So give us the set up for the movie.
Quaid goes to Rekall and he finds out through a set of circumstances that everything he thought was his life up to that point was a fabrication. Everything he thought was real including his marriage, his job, his identity, his name was a complete fabrication, and the rest of the film is him trying to figure out who he is and not get caught and killed and all that kind of stuff.
Tell us about Quaid.
He is basically living in a life that he seems he should be certainly, he’s quite content in, at least passively content in, but something’s up. Something’s missing. The frame of his life is kind of warbled, there are gaps of light that are creeping in, and he doesn’t understand why or what, but he’s just noticing that he feels ill at ease because of his environment, and that’s a common story.
How does your Quaid compare or differ from Schwarzenegger’s?
Unlike in the original where Arnold’s Quaid seemed to be complicit and have a deeper awareness of the break [from reality], and Quaid actually has no idea. There is some kind of deeply set cellular memory that exists on a cellular level and an emotional level. He doesn’t know who he is, and he is trying to find out where to place his next step. And the whole film is a journey back to himself.
Kate Beckinsale plays your wife in the film, and when Quaid begins to search for the truth she becomes quite the nemesis. You two had some intense fight scenes in the movie. What was that like?
That was fun. The trickiest part was kissing her with her handsome director husband (Len Wiseman) by the monitor. That was one of the more uncomfortable things I’ve experienced in my fifteen years of making films, but the fight was fun. We got in good shape, and we choreographed it down to the finest details; so, she knew all my moves. I knew all her moves. It was fun.
What do you hope audiences take away?
Entertainment. I think for entertaining for two hours, we’ve hit the mark. And I don’t mean that [lightly], that’s a hard thing to do. Just to make a film that’s entertaining, that doesn’t bore people or confuse people or pander to them and insult them by telling them too much and trying to find the balance between sharing information and withholding enough information to keep them guessing. I hope it’s all those things.
You can decide for yourself this weekend when Total Recall opens in theatres nationwide. The film is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, some sexual content, brief nudity, and language.