Total Recall

TOTAL RECALL is a flawed masterpiece, marred by multiple errors of aesthetic judgment and flat out absurd moments. Nonetheless, it raises a host of wonderful questions, has a huge number of memorable moments, and is arguably Arnold Schwarzenegger's best film after the first two TERMINATOR movies.

Although the story doesn't stay especially true to the Philip K. Dick short story upon which the movie was based --"We Can Remember It For You At Wholesale" -- it does contain the endless self-referentiality found in Dick's best stories and novels. Construction Worker Douglas Quaid (it was Quail in the short story, but the studio thought it might be viewed as a slap at then-vice president Dan Quayle goes to a virtual reality company named Rekall that provides the imprintation of fake memories of holidays. Having had persistent dreams of Marx, he wants a holiday to Mars. After some prodding, he agrees to pay for some extras, namely, an adventure package, in which he will feature as the hero in an espionage tale featuring resistance fighters, alien artifacts, a brunette who looks like the one who has been featuring in his dreams, and will get to save the world. But shortly after being placed in the equipment things start going wrong because it turns out he has already had false memories implanted. He quickly finds himself chased by the authorities before going to Mars where he meets the brunette of his dreams and with the use of alien artifacts saves the world. Or does he? Any viewer will be wondering along the way whether any of this is real or whether this is just his virtual adventure holiday. The film ends with Quaid wondering whether any of this truly was real or whether it was just the programming. And we are given no answer.

TOTAL RECALL was one of the very last important science fiction films made before the advent of CGI. It was one of the last to employ primarily miniatures and matte paintings rather than SCI. Even BABYLON 5 only three years later on television would use crude CGI for most of its special effects visuals. In this way TOTAL RECALL is the end of an era. Only a year later TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY would be released. Many of its greatest special effects were CGI. So in two straight films Schwarzenegger helped close one chapter of SF history and opened another.

The problem with TOTAL RECALL is that there are just too many moments that don't quite work. The inhabitants in the mutant section of underground Mars are just too comical self-indulgently mannered to contribute much to the film. And the animatronic rebel leader Kuato, who is inextricably attached to the body of another person, is easily one of th emost ludicrous SF creations since the original THE FLY, where at the end of the film we see a fly with the head of a screaming David Hedison, as it is about to be eaten by a spider. There are a host of terrible little lapses in judgment like this. The most unfortunate might be the climax of the film, as Quaid has turned on generators that will oxygenate the atmosphere of Mars. The ludicrousness comes not from the amazingly rapid creation of a breathable atmosphere for the planet, but from their completely ignoring the fact that the surface temperature of Mars is roughing that of Antarctica in the middle of winter. The visuals of Arnold and his female friend as they roll on the surface of Mars has to be one of the silliest sights in the history of big budget films. In real life they wouldn't have had to worry about air pressure; they would have frozen solid in only a few seconds.

All in all, this is both a truly rewarding and an immensely frustrating film to watch. It contains both a host of truly remarkable and utterly horrid moments. For me the good outweighs the bad and what we see in the end is a fascinating if undeniably flawed film.

This is a great movie with an interesting plot. I've seen it several times and each time I see something that I missed before. It's a must-have for any movie collection. I think it's one of Arnold's best.

What if you could have memories implanted? What if the implanted memories were so real that you could not tell the difference between the implanted memories and reality? What if you went to a place that implanted such memories and when you woke up, you discovered that you had lost your sense of reality and you no longer knew who you were?

Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a laborer living an apparent life of ease (and luxury - laborers must be paid really well in 2084) with his beautiful wife Lori (Sharon Stone). Life is good for Douglas and Lori, until Douglas gets it into his head that he wants to take a trip to Mars. Of course, Douglas is unable to go to Mars (Lori does not want to emigrate to Mars), so Douglas heads off to Rekall to get a brain implant.

Implanted memories are no big deal. You go in, they put you under, you get an implanted memory, and you go home thinking you had a great time on Mars. Douglas chose to be a spy and have a beautiful girlfriend. Unfortunately, the friendly folks at Rekall discover that Douglas had already had an implant and their attempt to implant a new memory was creating problems in Douglas's brain. However, the people at Rekall are able to cover up the problem and Douglas seems to walk away from Rekall without problems.

Unfortunately for Douglas, his wife is quite upset that Douglas went to Rekall. So upset that she works Douglas over. The next thing Douglas knows, a bunch of guys with really big guns are trying to blow him away and he is running for his life.

Douglas can only do one thing. He heads for Mars and the answers to his questions. Things on Mars get even more interesting. A man with a dictator's power, Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox, "Deliverance" and "Beverly Hills Cop"), controls Mars. Quaid seems caught between mutants, Cohaagen and Cohaagen's henchmen, led by Richter (Michael Ironside, "Scanners," "Watchers," and "Starship Troopers"). Of course, Quaid's murderous wife is still running around. Then there are the aliens. You will have to watch.

This movie is filled with action and allows you enough time to wonder what is real and what is fantasy, nearly to the end of the movie. I thought the special effects were quite good for 1990. There are places where you can easily see that a set is a miniature, but other miniatures are beautiful and wonderfully meshed with full-sized sets.

Director Paul Verhoeven and a team of writers did a wonderful job of building on a 1966 Philip K. Dick short story, "We Can Remember It for You." Even with some dated effects and styles, the movie still plays well, especially once the movie shifts to Mars. I absolutely loved the action-packed ending, wondering just how Quaid was going to survive. Fans of Philip K. Dick, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Rachel Ticotin and science fiction movies have to see this excellent movie, one of Arnold's best.

Enjoy!

Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is uneasy. Things are not right in the world. Sure, he has a nice place to live, a decent job in construction, and a beautiful wife (Sharon Stone) -- but he has a feeling he is missing out on something, that there is something false about his life, and that his destiny is elsewhere, maybe on Mars. He watches the news, reports of terrorist attacks, and reassurances of the government that everything is under control. He dreams of walking the red soil with a woman who is not his wife. Then, he hears about the company Rekall and their promise to deliver memories on demand, and takes advantage of their "special agent" package that will give him true to life memories of having been a secret agent on Mars, attached to a woman just like the one in his dreams. The hijinks that ensue, when he apparently finds out that he really IS a secret agent from Mars, whose memories had been erased, are lots of fun. What elevates the film above similar features like Running Man is that the action (which can get pretty violent) and adventure is tied to philosophical questions about the nature of memory and knowledge, and on the power of skepticism.

You don't need to imagine high-tech corporations capable of implanting memories to realize that memory is a dubious source of knowledge. We remember selectively at best, and psychological experiments have shown that memories can be altered and manipulated. One of the basic questions the film poses is whether Quaid should trust his memory and instincts or his reason. He needs to consider which is more likely: that he is a secret agent whose memories have been erased to make him seem like a lowly construction worker or whether the memory implant he actually remembers having chosen and that would make him remember to have been a secret agent with a sleazy brunette girlfriend has simply kicked in and is malfunctioning. Reason favors the simplest explanation; but Quaid of course goes with his gut. Does he choose correctly?

The plot of the film, then centers around the basic philosophical question how can we know what we think we know. It poses this question by means of a bizarre but entertaining science fiction scenario (drawn loosely from a story by Phillip K. Dick). That the question is not merely academic for Paul Verhoeven, however, is suggested by how similar the news reports from Mars are to those that we hear (and were hearing even in 1990 when the film was released) from the middle East. On Verhoeven's Mars, a group of rebels is fighting the governmental controls of society that are intended to secure its access to "Tribinium ore" -- a tremendous source of energy. Because these rebels lack governmentally sanctioned legitimacy, their struggles to save their planet and way of life are labelled "terrorism." The parallels are obvious. The most significant brand of skepticism raised by this film is not the academic form that asks "how can I know whether I am not dreaming" but the very healthy and necessary political skepticism that asks "how far can we trust the media to present the facts about our world in an unbiased way?"' While Quaid may well be mistaken in his belief that he is really a secret agent, he is certainly right to be troubled about the distortions regarding the Middle East (um, Mars, that is) that are presented by the popular media. As with most of the best of his films (Starship Troopers, Robocop, Black Book), Paul Verhoeven presents a powerful critique of contemporary society under the guise of a lightweight entertaining popcorn flick. Definitely one to watch, both fun and enlightening.

When a man goes for virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real, or does he?