Spoiler free Bad points: The location and basis of the plot is all wrong. What made the original Total Recall keeps its "is it real, is it not" confusion is that it's set in a place that the main character has never been before, he is completely detached from it, just seeing it on the news, in real life, so the events and locations could very much just be a figment of his imagination.

In this version, the events take place entirely around the same places he visits in his normal life, which wipes out a huge chunk of mystique of the original.

Also, THe main female lead, whilst doing an excellent job as a femme fetale, is a little too perfect. No matter how much she gets the crap kicked out of her, or blown up or whatever, she still looks ready to do a Vogue photoshoot.

She is also the world worst gossip, it seems her job in the film is to act as narrator. Numerous times throughout the film in the middle of fight scenes, she decides to fill in any area of the back story which might be slightly 'cloudy'. Once again this kills off any mystique to the film.

Finally i was left wondering if the Director had any history of working on the A-Team TV series. Despite the fact that half the armed forces in the film are 'synthetics' (robots), and the rest are supposed to be some sort of highly trained spy force, their shooting was terrible. Bullets were flying around all over the place, people were spraying them a few metres from each other and still missing, if those were my robots or troops, i'd be seriously concerned!

Up until Colin Farrell actually went to Rekall the film was awesome, and i was thoroughly looking forward to an unexpected diamond in the rough. However after this point in the film, it was like Total Recall for Dummies, brilliant action sequences and ideas were ruined by writing which seems to have had the mission statement of "make it so my 7 year old can understand what's happening".

Now despite all these bad points i still think it was a good sci-fi film. The bad writing has been rescued by the atmosphere, setting, and feel of the movie itself. I think they were so close to having an absoloute classic film here and just messed it up pandering to a dumb hollywood audience.

The action sequences are inspired with only one notable exception.[spoiler]The Zero-G fight. THere are several audible warnings that the gravity is about to go, but yet none of the 'bad guys' thinks to grab onto a handrail

Farrell says "i wish i was on mars"
Girl with 3 boobs, (also says "i'll make you wish you had 3 hands")
Robot arms get cut off my moving lift
Fat lady in customs in queue ahead of Farrell, identical to the 'fat lady suit' that Arnie wears in the original. (she even says "2 weeks" when asked how long her stay will be )
Central area in scene for Zero-G fight looks similar to the alien 'hand' on-switch in the original film.