Film
Total Recall
- Director
- Paul Verhoeven
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 113 mins
It’s 2084 and Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks he’s humble construction worker Doug Quaid. But maybe he’s not. Tortured by nightmares about Mars, he visits Rekall Inc, a company which implants memories of holidays, where he’s persuaded to take a fully-fledged ‘Ego Trip’ casting him as an undercover agent rooting out a conspiracy on Mars, eventually Saving the Planet and Winning the Girl. During the implantation procedure, something goes wrong: a previously erased personality bubbles to the surface and Arnie charges off to Mars to save the Planet, etc. Or does he? Is he really undergoing terminal psychosis back at Rekall?
Director Paul Verhoeven manages to incorporate all the magnificent special effects that $60 million (at 1990 prices) could buy, without sacrificing the claustrophobic conspiracy paranoia informing the Philip K. Dick yarn on which Total Recall is based, the “reality shift” introducing the last 30 minutes of the film being brilliantly handled. Meanwhile, Arnie gets to run around killing folks and spouting one-liners in his usual style, his “Consider that a divorce,” to duplicitous spouse Sharon Stone being something of a classic. It’s back on screen in digitally restored 4K form.
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