Can Colin step into Arnold's shoes?

MANILA, Philippines - Colin Farrell stars in Columbia Pictures’ Total Recall, an action thriller about reality and memory.

In the film, Rekall is a futuristic company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Farrell), even though he has got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life — real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs.

But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred and the fate of his world hangs in the balance as Quaid discovers his true identity, his true love, and his true fate.

What sort of man is your character, Quaid, in this version of Total Recall?

“We were following Philip K. Dick’s short story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, and in it, Quaid is a working class member of the proletariat, a worker, who is living a life that seems to be mundane enough for him to be having fantasies about, in the short story, going to Mars. In our film, it is not necessarily dreams about going to Mars, but he’s having a recurring dream and it has a great significance. So really he’s just a normal man; he’s just an everyman.”

Did you feel any pressure stepping into Schwarzenegger’s shoes?

“No, honestly, I didn’t feel any pressure. And I’m not trying to give a rehearsed answer, but it really felt like a different film. It really did. And I am a huge fan of the original Total Recall. I was a big fan of Arnie’s stuff as a kid, I’m talking Red Heat, Commando, obviously Terminator and Predator is still to this day one of the best action films I think I have ever seen. I loved his stuff, so thank God I didn’t feel pressure to fill those shoes or compete with that ability to throw out a one-liner. Maybe I could do Predator next (laughs)!”

Your vision of Total Recall is darker and more serious than Arnie’s, presumably?

“I wouldn’t like to say the original is cheesy, but it was a bit camp. You put a bullet in your wife’s head and you say (imitates Schwarzenegger): ‘Consider that a divorce!’ I mean, that was good, that was very good. It’s camp, and it’s not camp because it’s outdated. It was camp at the time; it’s meant to be. It’s intended that way, it’s not an accident, but this film is totally very different. I really approached it more as a drama, set against the backdrop of these magnificent cityscapes and these really elaborate action scenes.”

It’s not your first movie based on a story by Philip K. Dick.

“No, I did Minority Report. And with Minority Report and Total Recall, they’re not dissimilar visions of the future. They’re both inspired by Philip K. Dick’s work, and while his stories in literary form are open to interpretation and expansion, he inspired a certain world format. Sci-fi generally seems to be a fertile ground for drama. There’s a suspicion among all of us I think that the future is not so bright. Technology is making incredible leaps but what we are doing to ourselves as human beings is quite alarming. So while the vision of the future in Minority Report is not all that dark, it certainly is in Total Recall, Blade Runner, Pitch Black, Alien and the like.”

Total Recall looks a physical role so did you work out specifically for the film?

“I worked out consistently for three or four months, for five or six days a week, with weights. And I ran a lot. There’s a background to the character that is touched upon in the film where he might have had some military training, which I’d need to know about. I knew it was going to be a physical shoot so yes I worked out quite a bit.”

With Kate Beckinsale as his wife

You seemed to move away from blockbusters for a while before taking on Total Recall. Was it a conscious decision to stay away from them?

“I had a few films that were big but that didn’t do so well, and I wasn’t getting offered that many big blockbusters either. Then this came along and I read the script. I was initially dubious when I heard that they were remaking Total Recall. I thought, ‘Is it worth it and what are they going to say about the original?’ But I read it and it was such an excellent script.”

(Opening in theaters on Aug. 22, Total Recall is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.)