Total Recall
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Movie Reviews of Total Recall
Movie Review: Easy to Like Even if You Don't Like Its Star
Summary: 5 Stars
"Total Recall," (1990), a sci-fi action thriller set sometime in the future, stars Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's based on "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," a short story by the noted sci fi author Philip K. Dick, was penned for the screen by Ronald Shusett, and was directed by Paul Verhoeven. It boasts a high-quality score by Jerry Goldsmith. And it's as easy to like as its affable, hugely muscular star, who, we know, has gone far in real life, too.
The film's set in Mexico City future, and on the famously red planet, Mars, where they've found something worth mining, leading to its colonization from Earth. Unfortunately, however, the planet has no atmosphere, thus no oxygen: all settlers and tourists must stay within an immense dome, and pay the local administration for air. Schwarzenegger plays Douglas Quaid, supposedly an ordinary earthly construction worker, though married to the beauteous young Lori (Sharon Stone). But Quaid is actually a recently brainwashed incarnation of Hauser, who was a big man on Mars as an administration spy. Quaid dreams of the red planet, and is so strongly drawn back there that he goes to a firm called Rekall, that implants pleasant memories, of whatever virtual vacation a client might select, in the subject's brain. But Quaid pays extra to virtually vacation as a spy, in cahoots with Melina, the sleazy-demure girl(Rachel Ticotin) he's chosen from the book. Problems arise, and Quaid must beat it back to Mars.
Verhoeven is a good action director -- he also gave us "Robocop--" and he's got a down and dirty Dutch touch. Sets are good: neither Mars, nor the city of the future, has too much of a cardboard look. And, in fact, just when things look most spacey, we're wittily, abruptly brought down to earth by something that still looks a lot like present-day Mexico City, to those who know it, or a can of Pepsi, a neon "lite" beer sign, or a sidewalk newspaper vending machine selling "Mars Today," in the familiar red logo of "USA Today." The citizens of Mars' Venusville, and its physical appearance, are spicy hot hot hot. The dialogue is witty -- Schwarzenegger gets off a couple of his famous one-liners, including "Consider this a divorce." The plot's good, and quick, satisfyingly complex, and has quite a few witty moments, too.
Schwarzenegger receives strong backing from an athletic young Stone as his wife,and Latina Ticotin as the sleazy-demure other woman: they're quite likely the best parts either woman ever had. The supporting players are solid. That European hand of director Verhoeven is frequently evident. There's a lot more blood, sweat, and spit than we're used to seeing in movies, and a closer look is taken, for example, at some dying goldfish, than we're accustomed to. (Quite possibly, closer than we would prefer.)
Verhoeven, unhappily, lets his special effects get the best of him in the film's last few minutes: they have a "Grand Guignol" quality not to everyone's taste. But it's an entertaining, interesting movie up until then.
Movie Review: In a Future Where...
Summary: 5 Stars
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!
Movie Review: The future of yesteryear
Summary: 5 Stars
What else can be said about this movie except that it all seems so innocent now? And seeing CRTs with obviously curved glass in sci-fi flicks from the 80s and early 90s is always funny anyway. Not to mention the hairstyles and costumes. (This is one thing Kubrick got right -- his computer screens in 2001 - A Space Odyssey are flat...)
Nothing is as dated as the misguided futurism of yesterday. But that does not mean it is a bad movie, only one where some of the "futuristic" elements haven't aged all that well.
But the main thing about the film is of course the Big Question -- what of this, if any of it, is "real", what is imagined? Not that I want to sidestep that question, but has anybody ever considered the fact that this is a fricking _movie_? In other words, the whole thing is a fantasy, and those "dream-implanting machines" are just the fancy sci-fi analogue of a movie theater! The one who is getting false memories implanted is not Arnie's character, but the audience who is watching this (and tries to find out if it real or not), i.e. YOU.
Consider this movie a comment on the act of film-watching itself. That you ask questions about the reality of it all really only shows you are ignoring the obvious thing, the cinema/plasma/TFT screen in front of you.
Maybe that is a daring hypothesis, but then again Starship Troopers and Verhoeven's other films are certainly not to be taken at face value either, so I guess suspecting that the director is trying to make an ironic statement here about his profession is not so far-fetched after all.
And within the reality of the movie, it is made quite clear that, once the technology to fake memories perfectly has been invented, you can _never_ again be sure of what is real and what isn't. And therefore, it does not make sense for Arnie's character to ask himself that. "Your mind will not know the difference", so what would be the point?
And ultimately, we cannot verify our "real" memories either. You may live now and have memories of what you did a week ago, but there is no way for you to go back to make sure you really did what you thought you did a week ago. So from that standpoint we are not in a better position than Arnie's character, except that we generally do not question the validity of our memory very much, even though means exist (hypnosis) to alter it just as effectively as with the (hopefully) fictional machine in this movie.
Movie Review: What's in da two week package
Summary: 5 Stars
Oh boy! Its Sid the Elf here to review Total Recall. We just can't get enough Arnold. Just hearing the guy talk is enough for a few stars. However, this review will not be the typical recounting of cheesey special effects, and how the plot cannot be possible because of the time-space continuim. This is Sid the Elf baby! You know what that means? Thats right: It's turbo time! If we, Sid the Elf, are reviewing this film, chances are it is pretty sweet and really funny. In Total Recall, Arnold plays Douglas Quaid. This is one of the coolest parts in movie history. He is a good-natured guy who will, if you cross him, rip your arms off and beat you to death with them. He is an adventerous and somewhat discontented construction worker in 2084 who has a strange fixation with Mars and wants to vacation there. That would be like wanting to vacation in Detroit now. His wife, played by "just starting to become hot" Sharron Stone, does not want to do that vacation, oddly. So, Arnold decides to get a vacation memory of Mars implanted, which aparently you will be able to do. Yeah, awesome. So, it turns out that his life now, as a construction worker, is a memory implantation. He's actually a secret agent on Mars, fighting a dictator who sells oxygen to the citizens. And his wife is a double agent who tries to kill him. Was this a political comentary on where America is heading? Sid doesn't know, but he does know that this movie rocked. It was an awesome premise for a movie, and it actually was the perfect vehicle for Arnold. This flick had 35 soundboard lines. Yes, 35. That's good enough to break into the Arnold movie pantheon. We even thought Total Recall was in the same league as Predator.
You can't argue Arnold's prowess. His hillarious voice and rippling muscles have a magnitism that can't be touched. He is totally dominating Sid's reviews right now. Total Recall is too good to not give the Sid the Elf Seal of Approval, 5 stars, or Joe Bob's Drive-In Totals. So, here it goes:
2 neck snappings(1 with a foot, which we doubt is even possible. B-alert!)
6 objects implanted in heads
1- 3 breasted chick...
and roughly 386 hillarious Arnold faces (note: from now on, when someone is straining so much that it looks like their teeth are trying to run away from their mouth that face will be known as the Arnold Total Recall face, the Douglas Quaid face, or the I Am Quaid face.)
Movie Review: An ultra-violent mind-bend
Summary: 5 Stars
Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) thinks he is just an ordinary construction worker who dreams of moving to Mars. However, after a spur-of-the-moment visit to Recall (a company that implants false memories of holidays into the minds of people who are too busy or too poor to go on them), Quaid suddenly starts to remember a previous life that he lived on Mars as a secret agent. Soon Quaid is being chased by a lot of people who want to kill him and he is no longer sure of who to trust, including his wife (Sharon Stone) and himself.
"Total Recall" is a rarity among action films - a film with an intelligent, mind-bending script that is also filled with some incredible set pieces. It can be enjoyed for its story or if you prefer, you can just sit back and enjoy the mindless violence. Either way, it's a really great film. When this film was made, Schwarzenegger was at the height of his career, as was director Paul Verhoeven (who also directed "Robocop") and Stone was about to reach the height of hers (she would reach that two years later when she and Verhoeven again worked together on "Basic Instinct"). Neither Schwarzenegger nor Stone has ever been accused of being a "great" actor, but that doesn't mean that they're not fun to watch, as is the case here. Arnie gets to deliver some great one-liners and kick butt, and as usual, Stone adds a certain trashy quality to the proceedings.
Paul Verhoeven is fast becoming one of my favourite directors and "Total Recall" has just become my second favourite of his films (after "Starship Troopers"). Verhoeven has a reputation for delivering films with huge amounts of gratuitous, over-the-top violence and he does it again here (although, clearly some of the more violent scenes have been cut down to get a lower rating, since the violence seems kind of tame compared to the "Robocop" director's cut). As I said in my recent review of "Robocop", it is possible that these high levels of violence could upset some viewers. However, to me they seem so unrealistic that I find it difficult to imagine anyone seeing them as being anything other than ridiculous good fun.