Director: Paul Verhoeven
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Rating: B+
This is what a classic science fiction, action movie looks like. The special effects and the futuristic world are totally ridiculous and the acting isn't the best (hey, it's stars Arnold), but the script is great, the movie is smart, and the characters envoke emotion.
For some time, Earth construction worker Douglas Quaid (Shwarzenegger) has been having a reoccurring dream about Mars and a mysterious woman there (Ticotin). He expresses a desire to go there despite it's political problems, which his wife Lori (Stone) and everyone around him discourages. Finally he decides to visit Rekall, a place where memories are implanted into your brain - he selects the spy mission to Mars. Except, while he's under something begins to go wrong and suddenly it appears that Quaid is in fact a spy from Mars whose memory was wiped and everyone, from the governor of the colony of Mars, Vilos Cohaagn (Cox), and his chief lieutenant, Richter (Ironside), to Quaid's wife are trying to kill him. Quaid must fight to survive and figure out just who he is, and maybe get back the woman of his dreams, before being killed himself - or, is it all a dream, implanted into his mind by Rekall?
Total Recall was all about screwing with our minds and making us doubt the entire premise of a movie years before Christopher Nolan had even thought about Inception. Even at the end of the film you're not really sure whether or not Quaid's adventure was real and if he is in fact just having some paranoid delusion while strapped into a chair in Rekall. It's the ultimate spinning top. But paranoid delusion or not, the film has you on the edge of your seat hoping that Quaid's going to survive and get the girl and the whole shebang. You hope that this is really happening and isn't just the delusions of some Average Joe - because, really, Arnold Schwarzenegger could totally pass as an Average Joe.
Really, actually I think that's the biggest flaw in this movie, the idea of Arnold being some construction worker nobody. It's the one improvement that the remake made - sure, Colin Farrell's hot and that'll make him stand out in a crowd, but in the land of a Hollywood movie where everyone's beautiful, at least he isn't built like Schwarzenegger. I mean, the guy doesn't really blend into a crowd, which is kind of essential to the plot of Total Recall. But if that's my biggest complaint, that Schwarzenegger doesn't blend into a crowd and look like he could pass as Average Joe, then it just goes to show how good this movie is. It's not my only complaint - I do hate how lame all the technology is - but it's the only one that's really founded. The technology may be big and bulky and look like it belongs on the set of Star Trek: The Original Series instead of a movie from the early nineties, but at the same time technology then really did look like that. Total Recall's technology in itself isn't really trying to look like what future technology should look like, but rather be 'futuristic' in style - Mars Rover or not, Man has not colonized another planet, nor can they stick electronic tracking devices up people's noses, or implant memories in their brains. It might not look futuristic to us, but it still is futuristic.
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