Total Recall

Total Recall (1990)

Runtime: 113 minutes

Directed by: Paul Verhoeven

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, Michael Ironside, Rachel Ticotin

From: Carolco/Tristar

I know, this is up later than I had planned. But, I was out and about Monday afternoon and decided to visit the local Blockbuster. I decided to rent the Avatar Blu-Ray, as not only had I heard that the picture/sound were great, but I saw it myself when I was at a Best Buy recently (on a fancy LED TV, too) and I was astounded by the picture/sound. So, I brought it home for the night and watched it on the big screen. Even though the Blu-Ray player was a cheap one from Wal-Mart, it did its job, as it always has done for any DVD/Blu-Ray disc. I ended up seeing it with my dad, and he enjoyed it more than I thought he would; he can be a tough critic… maybe that’s where I get it from…

Anyhow, he asked an all-time great question when he first saw star Sam Worthington, bathed in blue and in extreme close-up. He asked if he was Jean-Claude Van Damme! I swear, it’s true. Could you even being to imagine JCVD being the lead in THAT movie? That’s mind-blowing.

By the way, I finally created an Excel list of all the movies that I’ve reviewed on this site, which is pretty handy. This happens to be the 69th movie I will review here.

This movie I first saw at a pal’s place at NIU during my college days. I had a car at the time at ISU in Normal and I drove up to DeKalb for the night. It was an apartment party and it was the morning after. I didn’t feel the best but I still saw the first part of the movie, and I enjoyed it but I wasn’t able to see it all. That came a little later back in Normal when I rented it for the day.

This science-fiction tale is certainly not your typical run of the mill yarn. A typical run of the mill guy, Douglas Quaid (Arnold; well, a typical guy except for his incredibly large muscular physique) with an attractive wife (Stone) starts having dreams about going to Mars as he lives on a futuristic Earth, where not only is it possible to go to Mars, but colonies of people live there. His wife doesn’t want him to go there, but Quaid gets around it by finding out about a place called Rekall, where you get “false memories” implanted in your brain where you are convinced that you went somewhere but you actually didn’t. He has a specific trip in mind on Mars (it’s customizable) and right before the trip happens, Douglas freaks out and he is medicated and sent home. Suddenly, things go to hell and his wife is actually a spy who tries to kill him, and then people come out of the woodwork to try and kill him, and it turns out that he’s actually a spy on Mars named Hauser who had his memory wiped out and sent to Earth; he was working for the main corporation on the red planet, run by Cox and employing henchmen like Ironside. Hauser ended up working for the resistance on Mars; it’s people who wish for more rights and privileges on the planet and respect an unseen figure called Kuato (wait until you see what Kuato looks like; what a bizarre idea it was for the character to turn out like he did). With clues that Hauser himself provided via video before he “vanished”, Quaid/Hauser gets caught up on things and he has adventures on Mars. Now, is that what really happened, or…

This movie, which more than held up at the time I saw it back in like 2003, still holds up today. It’s not filled with fancy computer graphics but the sets and miniature models are great for the time and they flat-out work. The biggest hook for the movie and what makes it stand out is the theme of what is real vs. what is imagined. Is what I typed up above what really happened, or was it that Quaid’s Hauser adventures are the memories that he was given by Rekall, but an accident made things haywire? Or, is it another interpretation? As you see the movie, there are a number of different possibilities as for what exactly is real and what is just a memory, and the film never explains which interpretation is correct. No matter how you view the movie (your viewpoint can differ from each different viewing of it), it’s great fun and considering director Verhoeven (who did Robocop, after all), the action is as bloody and violent as you might expect. This is one of Arnold’s best and it’s not “another dumb action film” in the very least. If you haven’t seen it, you should, although note that both the DVD version and the Blu-Ray versions have crappy pictures, sad to say. You’ll still love the film but the image itself will be rather poor. At least the DVD (the version that was put out with some nice special features, at least) is better than the Blu-Ray in that it barely has any special features to speak of; why the DVD special features weren’t ported over I have no comprehension, but sad to say that is more common and happens with many different studios than you’d think.

Also unfortunate are the rumors (going on for the past few years now) that this is going to be remade. Why? It wasn't even 20 years old when the rumors first started! There's no way to improve the movie; it's perfect as it is and adding fancy CGI effects (which may end up looking hokey and fake compared to the original film) doesn't justify the remake route. Sigh...

I’ll be back Memorial Day with at least one new review.