Cast- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone

Here comes one of the best science-fiction/action movies made this century.  This may seem like an over exaggeration, but its not.  Total Recall features a plot so cleverly produced that it seems to good to be true.

Hauser(Schwarzeneggar) plays a man who is unaware of his past.  Taking place in the 21st century, he goes day-to-day to his labourous construction working job, without knowing who he really is.  His beautiful wife, Lori(Stone) is too good to be true, and Hauser feels there's something missing.  He has nightmares involving the planet Mars and he wants to visit it.  But Lori discourages him everytime he brings up the topic.  So instead of actually visiting the planet itself, he chooses to have the memory him visiting the planet implanted in his mind.  He goes to a "local" memory implant centre, that looks a lot like your doctor's office and buys one of their packages.  But this is where everything goes haywire.  During the procedure, Hauser interrupts it and starts acting crazy.  His violent outrage forces the people in the centre to drug him.  And to ensure he doesn't come back, they erase his memory of him even coming there.

This is where the plot really begins.  After he comes back, he starts finding out he's not really who he's supposed to be.  His friends turn against him, and even his wife tries to kill him.  Hauser is confused, not knowing why they want to kill him, but he manages to stay alive.  The rest of the movie focuses on Hauser getting off Earth and going to Mars, where an evil dictator, Cohaagon(played menacingly by Ronny Cox) is depriving people of the oxygen and is ridiculously overpricing them.  Hauser holds a secret to free the people of Mars from the clutches of Cohaagon, and its because of that secret, Cohaagon erased his memory and dumps on Earth with a phony wife and friends.  Its up to Hauser to defeat Cohaagon.

This movie is absoulutely thrilling.  There is gratuitous amounts of violence that is often hard to watch, but it doesn't really matter because there is an excellent plot backing up the action in the film.  You are with Hauser the entire length of the film because you also want to find out who he really is.  Schwarzeneggar is believable the entire way and the special effects surrounding him are outstanding.  There are so many (one effect is featured on the main page of our site) sequences in the film where the special effects really show off.  But the special effects and the plot are balanced out so they don't outshine each other.  I think this is why the movie works.  Its smart, and there's a lot of craziness in a lot of the action sequances as well, that gets you so immersed in the film.  How he even gets to Mars is another adventure in itself.  The excitement level stays right up to the psychotic climax, and then finally you can get a chance to breath.

Total Recall is director Paul Verhoeven's best film.  His other films include, Robocop, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers just to name a few.  But none of those other films can be comparable to this one.  Simply amazing.

RATING: *****