Things which don’t make sense:

1. The very premise of turning this super secret agent into a factory worker: Britain has at its hands its former legendary most skilled agent, and what do they do with him? Give him the memories of a factory worker at a conveyor belt. Especially since they were going to reprogram him to be his old agent self again anyway, why not brainwash him to be back on their side instead of a useless nobody?

2. The plan to wipe out the colony: The pseudo-political justification given in the movie was that Britain was running out of living space (LEBENSTRAUM) and hence needed to wipe out the colony (Euphemism for Australia) in order to move more citizens there. Now this only works if it is at the expense of an “othering” – which wasn’t the case in the movie. There is free movement of labour between the two countries. The citizens look the same. The citizens of the colony work in Britain anyway. It’s not like they are Slavs, as per WW2.

3. The consequences of Rekall: Rekall isn’t just about administering dreams or hallucinations, as per Inception. They create memories, which then become a part of the person’s character/personality/beliefs. Isn’t it a bit dangerous to program someone with the memories and belief that he was an anti-government secret agent?

4. The presence of human soldiers: What exactly is the purpose of human soldiers in an invasion if the freaking android soldiers are so damn smart already???

5. Inconsistent accents: The British Chancellor didn’t have a British accent. The Australian rebel leader (unfortunately) didn’t have an Australian accent. Most of the characters sound plain American.

Things which merely amuse me:

1. Colin Farrell: much like In Bruges, he does this “i’m confused, in danger, panicking” look very well – although he was more sian, and more Irish in In Bruges.

2. Two chicks who look the same: I often had to look very carefully to see which chick is which, especially at the very last scene, I couldn’t tell whether there was a face change or not. I guess 1) the British accent served to tell the two apart. 2) It made the point that the protagonist didn’t choose his life based on which chick was hotter. Gremlin and I agree that one is hotter, while the other is prettier. (Cough kinsey scale cough)

3. Crazy murderous wife: The Chancellor wants you alive, but your wife would risk her job and position to shoot to kill. And she will continue to chase you with a sub-machine gun even after being reprimanded by the Chancellor.

4. Political conspiracy theory: Rebel groups don’t do bombings. Governments do – so that they can have funding/authority to increase military spending (or tap phones and invade oil rich countries). Hrm, makes you wonder why bombings only happen once so often in real life.

5. The entire Australia is Chinatown: I’m not sure if the director/producer was trying to be snarky. There is no more China to survive the world apocalypse. But it seemed that the Chinese population have merely moved to occupy The Colony and turn the entire landscape into a Chinatown-esque place. There are posters with Chinese words everywhere. The bartender is Chinese, and even a black woman wears an oriental outfit. Not an unforeseeable future.

Chingchongchanglongtingtong. Welcome to Australia of the future.

6. OBAMA ON A BANK NOTE. Not bad.

7. The ‘what the fuck is real’ dilemma: This is my favourite scene in the movie. Right when you’re surrounded, your best friend from work appears to ‘negotiate’ with you. Tells you that you’re still in a dream, and the only way to wake up is to shoot the rebel girl – and then goes on to really really fuck with your mind and try to gain/play on your trust.

The correct thing to do will be to shoot that friend. Because if what he says is true, it’s a dream anyway – and he isn’t going to die from that, I think. If what he says is untrue, you would have otherwise shot a chick for nothing.

The plain SMLJWTF award:

1. The three boobed hooker: Completely random, uncalled for, not cute at all, and plain disturbing.  I thought that was a bad chernobyl joke. Really not cute at all.