If the original Arnold Schwarzenegger movie was sophisticated R-rated summer blockbuster entertainment (oh how I miss them), the remake tells the same story (and even the same scenes) but regurgitated in the most joyless, unimaginative bland PG-13 fashion. Bryan Cranston is wasted, as is Bill Nighy's cameo.
It's bad when a scene of Colin Farrell exploring his mysterious security deposit box, I got deja vu of THE BOURNE IDENTITY. I thought watching that sequence, gee I wonder if like the first BOURNE picture, the hero discovers that he's got a secret city apartment that's spacious, white, and vacant.
Well what do you know, he discovers that he's got a secret city apartment that's spacious, white, and vacant.
Heh.
I did like some of the pricey production design (the movie reportedly cost $150-200 million), derivative of BLADE RUNNER obviously but like THE FIFTH ELEMENT it tried to expand that futuristic movie visual template using more recent FX technology. I even liked the hand phone gadget, which brings up perverted questions and implications of such a device. What if a young man is...doing something in private...and accidentally strokes I mean squeezes the auto-dial button and calls up Pizza Hut? (How would phone sex work?)
Technically not a bad movie, even pretty sometimes, but still not worth seeing, even on Netflix.
