Total Recall ---- **1/2 (out of 5) (1990)
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, Michael Ironside
Director(s): Paul Verhoeven
Screenwriter(s): Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Gary Goldman
Released on: June 1, 1990
Reviewed on: April 11, 2004
Rated: R - for violence, blood, language, and mild nudity
TOTAL RECALL places top-notch movie action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the role of Douglas Quaid, a simple man that works construction and lives with his wife/girlfriend in a distant future sometime in the 21st century. Doug is obsessed with the planet Mars and decides to visit a company called Rekall whose advertisement offers trips to any one of the planets in the solar system as part of their packages. The company, Rekall, can implant an artificial memory chip in a person's mind and allow them to live their own fantasy. Any person you desire to be, any place you desire to go, and any life you desire to lead, Rekall can make it happen for as long as you want. Doug chooses a memory implantation in which he is a secret agent from Mars that will fight off bad guys left and right, save the planet, and even get the girl in the end all in a timeslot of two weeks. But problems arise during the implantation, and Douglas finds himself not on Mars but on Earth fighting off bad guys as he was planned, wondering if he is living his fantasy or experiencing a very bad dose of reality.
TOTAL RECALL is confusing. Just about any viewer can establish that fact as clear as day. What makes it rather complicated is placing us in the same situation as Douglas. We, too, must sit back at times and ponder on whether we're watching part of Douglas's fantasy life being played out or something that's actually happening to him in his real life. Although I don't believe that TOTAL RECALL ever hopped back and forth along the line that separates reality from fantasy, but by the end, we still don't really know for sure. The film leaves us with some brain-itching, unanswered questions.
Maybe the filmmakers figured that the hefty heap of action, gunfights, and chase scenes would take our minds off of the plot details. Sorry, guys, but the popcorn entertainment still can't totally overshadow what the viewer truly wants, and that is answers. We do get some slightly satisfying explanation about one-third of the way into the film from the owner of Rekall, Inc. Although things still remain foggy after he clears a few things up, at least we can escape from the "What the hell is going on?" kind of attitude that we were in immediately after Doug was given the implant.
I give thanks to the crew for putting forth some effort into decent, gun-blazing fight scenes that were pretty entertaining on the whole. The special effects crew did go overboard on the "blood" factor. I found myself taken aback by the extreme amount of blood in the film, just because I wasn't expecting the filmmakers to go so far as to spew red stuff in every direction during fights accompanied with bone-crunching noises and a few cringe-worthy deaths. If they hadn't overused the stuff, we could have easily forgiven the fact that it looked pretty cheesy. But, by the time the end of the film was approaching, the red food coloring had popped up so often that it flowed like water. A scene in the end in which a bad guy's arms are ripped off could have been a whole lot more devastating if we had seen less. Instead, Arnold is shown holding the guy's severed arms with blood leaking from the stumps, and the entire death just turned out corny and exaggerated.
TOTAL RECALL is mediocre at best because of the filmmakers' lack of thorough explanation and valid details throughout. But I suppose if you're looking for some classic Arnie-style action, then TOTAL RECALL should pack quite a punch with its wild thrills and campy entertainment.
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