Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Douglas Quaid, an everyday workaday Joe who has an overwhelming fascination with Mars. The Mars of this future is a dystopian mining colony ruled over with an iron fist by corporate moneybags Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox); fighting a brutal war of attrition against an underground resistance movement lead by the mysterious Kuato. Quaid is nonetheless fascinated by its barren red landscape and rumours of alien technology, so when his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) puts the kibosh on his plans to travel there, he opts for the next best thing in getting some fabricated memories of a Mars trip from the Rekall company. He opts for an adventure package where he plays a spy on a mission to the red planet. Unfortunately the implant process goes wrong and it is discovered that Quaid has already had fake memories implanted. This leads him on a dangerous journey to Mars to recover his own identity and help overthrow the ruthless Cohaagen. But is this all reality or the product of a botched memory implant? The movie plays it uncertain all the way through.
Schwarzenegger is great in his last real hard action role (Terminator 2 was ahead of him still, but this was the last of the real senselessly violent action movies that built his early career – Commando, Predator, Red Heat et al). Ronny Cox plays another corporate bastard villain, just like his menacing turn as Dick Jones in Robocop. He’s a great actor and shares bad guy duties with chief henchman, Richter, played by Michael Ironside who chews the scenery with a seething intensity, and gets his comeuppance in the most memorable scene of the movie. I also noticed, fact fans, that the cast includes Dean Norris a.k.a. Walt’s brother in law Hank from Breaking Bad, playing mutant resistance fighter Tony!
The dvd commentary with Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger is a lot of fun. I confess at this stage I have not sat through all of it, but I put it on for some key scenes as I was intrigued to get their take on what was going on. The film is deliberately ambiguous, but on the talk track Verhoeven states outright that although he purposely filmed the movie to be interpreted either way, he intended for it to all be a dream after Quaid first goes to Rekall. He spells it out - “from this moment on it’s all a dream” - and it’s great to hear them both discuss their experiences and theories on what is a very entertaining commentary. By addressing the ambiguity of the storyline in the commentary it feels like Verhoeven is letting you in on a secret. The dream aspect is not overt in the movie but the filmmaker’s intent is explicit in the commentary. He talks about the scene with Dr Edgemar from Rekall – even admitting the audience will be wanting the story to be ‘real’ and rooting for Arnie. But it’s not! I guess that highlights why the film is great. Verhoeven knows what he’s doing, knows what the film is about, knows what it is that the audience will be thinking and what they want from the film, and he subverts that. He knows we will be rooting for Arnie as the hero of a conventional action flick, and he gives us that; but at the same time if you look closely the clues are all there to show it is merely a delusion playing itself out in Quaid’s mind. But even if you decide to take Total Recall at face value (admittedly a few of the commentary explanations for it being a dream fall a little flat) then that’s ok too by Verhoeven. He’s not too pompous to allow the audience to take it as a straight up action film and provides plenty of good reasons for you to do so.
It is graphically violent. When people get shot the bullets pulp them; Martian police officers get lifted off their feet by gun fire; Arnie skewers a guy in the face with a metal pole; civilians get used as human shields; and the piece de resistance is Richter’s grim elevator demise. If Arnie tussles with a group of bad guys, then every fight scene ends with a visceral aerial shot of the thugs lying in a grisly pool of blood.
For the most part, all of its tech is either perfectly believable or actually starting to appear. Looking at it now the only things that seem outdated are the size of the viewscreens and use of keyboards in the shopping mall scene – who in 1980’s Hollywood could have envisaged flat screens, touch screens and iPads?
Some of the effects, such as the landscapes and spaceships are starting to look a little bit dated, but considering the age of the movie, are really not too bad at all. Most of the other effects – disguises and gore and mutants - still look fantastic in 2011. Rob Bottin (The Thing)’s work strongly putting that young upstart CGI in its place.
Verhoeven used a lot of the same crew that he used on Robocop, a movie that would make for a perfect double bill with Total Recall, and at the risk of sounding like an old fart, they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Nowadays it seems all futuristic sci fi has to be explained and their universes have to be put in context by being compared to ours in some way. Whereas in the 70s and 80s you would be just presented with some bizarro future world which the filmmaker just plonked you right in the middle of, and you just had to accept it and discover it as the movie goes along. Total Recall is successful with this and its future is not too far off our own so we don’t have to make too big of a leap.
I would love to see Verhoeven back in Hollywood making movies like this again. After helming such fantastically violent sci-fi as Total Recall, Robocop and Starship Troopers, it’s a proper shame that he hasn’t made a film of its like in years. I want to see more intelligent, violent and above all else ENTERTAINING science fiction from this man (although, let’s not mention Hollow Man at this stage, because that laboured clunker ruins my whole point!).
In conclusion, Total Recall is the last of its kind. A gratuitously brutal 80’s action flick (that technically came out in the 90s) and sci-fi mindfuck all rolled into one. One of Arnie’s last hurrahs before turning his hand to shitty family comedy, dubious right wing politics and tabloid disgrace. It brims with invention and excitement, from story to effects to direction and it just flat out rules. Hard.
IMDB: Total Recall
supercool Mondo poster from 2009 (above) by Tyler Stout.
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