Movie Review: Total Recall (1990) directed by Paul Verhoeven
Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has a recurring dream set on Mars. In it, he is exploring the landscape with a woman who is not his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) when he has an accident and his helmet breaks, causing Quaid to suffocate. When he awakens, Quaid wants to move to Mars despite the dire meaning of the dream, much to Lori’s disgust. Then Quaid sees an ad for a company named Rekall. They can implant memories of a vacation on Mars. Quaid opts for the bonus “secret agent adventure” add-on. But when the implant is attempted, something goes horribly wrong.
It seems that Quaid already has memories of being a secret agent on Mars that were erased, and attempting to insert the fake memories is causing a reaction. The worried Rekall employees sedate Quaid and dump him in a cab, having partially erased his memories of coming to Rekall in the first place. Quaid is baffled when his coworkers suddenly try to kill him, and even more so when his wife does! She now claims they aren’t married, but instead she’s part of his cover identity on Earth, but now that he’s blown that, it’s time for him to die.
Mars, by the way, is run by a fellow named Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), who has a monopoly on the air supply and mistreats the mine workers and mutants who inhabit the domed cities. His current top agent is Richter (Michael Ironside), who would probably be better at tracking Quaid down if Mr. Cohaagen wasn’t keeping secrets from him.
Eventually, Quaid evades his pursuers long enough to get to Mars and contact the Rebellion, one of whom is the woman from his dreams, Melina (Rachel Ticotin). Can Quaid remember the secret locked inside his missing memories before Cohaagen wipes out all resistance?
This film was inspired by Philip K. Dick’s short story, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.” Mainly it used the “false memories of a vacation on Mars reveal real memories” bit, as the original was decidedly not an action story. Alas, this meant the writers had to scrap the original’s twist ending. (It’s a doozy.)
Good: Some nice special effects, character makeup, and action sequences. Some of PKD’s habit of playing around with “what is real?” was put into the script. Arnie gets some good moments of humor as well as action.
Less good: Lori and Melina are juxtaposed in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, and the writing for them is noticeably less well done than for Quaid and Richter. Arnie’s snappy one-liners when he kills people seem to have been imported just because audiences expected them. Some of the science is dubious even for the time period in service of cool special effects.
Random thought: Given the existence of fake memory technology, it’s quite possible several of the bad guys were brainwashed into being so–this is never brought up in story.
Content note: Lots of violence, some gory. Bigamy, kind of. Female partial nudity (three-breasted hooker, yay!), foul language. Harm to animals.
Overall: Mostly a big loud action movie with just a little bit of extra depth. Not the best movie of anyone involved, but never boring and with plenty to see. Share popcorn with your friends!
