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Directed by: Paul Verhoeven Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronny Cox, Sharon Stone The second in Paul Verhoeven's three-spurt directorial money shot was Total Recall. It recalls a lot of themes from previous work--the dystopic future, corporate oligarchy and dark humour of Robocop, the surreal mind games of The 4th Man. It also draws strong influence from that era's perverse facsination with oily musclemen blowing absolutely everything the gently caress up. Arnold Schwarzenegger is Douglas Quaid, a bored construction worker on a future Earth. He takes a chance on an artificial memory implant to simulate a "secret agent" vacation to Mars, but things go horribly wrong when the process unblocks some sensitive memories. Quaid is, it seems, another man--Hauser--and his brain is host to some information the omnipresent Mars corpo-government doesn't want falling into the hands of some gooey-looking mutant rebels. Whether everything is real or just part of Rekall's program is open to interpretation. The acting is solid oak, particularly Arnold, who couldn't properly deliver a line requiring genuine emotion to save his personal nutrition. His attempts at quips are pretty laughable, including but not limited to "Sue me, dickhead," and, "Screw you!" while driving a giant drill into somebody. Rachel Ticotin seems bored as love interest Melina, and Michael Ironside is forgettable as a second-rate Clarence Boddigger. Ronny Cox is pretty solid as the snarky Mars dictator, however. Yeah, you're about as likely to see this movie for acting performances as you are to cast Sharon Stone in a script that doesn't call for tits and bush (which she doesn't show here, incidentally). But looking at it nearly fifteen years after the fact, the varnish from the effects and notoriety has rubbed off as profusely as I did the first time I saw Stone in Sliver. The story is interesting enough--it's "sci-fi" without being too descriptive or foreign to an average slob who doesn't care about space travel, politics or colonization beyond the possibility of ritualistic orgies with sexy alien diplomats. The pacing is frantic. Hardly ten minutes pass before Quaid is dropped headlong into his predicament, and hardly a moment passes there without someone getting blown up, shot, dismembered or showing off a trifecta of tits. And the effects? Well, it isn't really fair to bitch about an 80s interpretation of the future, but damned if late-21st century Mars doesn't look like a bit remniscient of a claustrophobic, mid-80s Times Square, complete with a Debbie Gibson-esque midget whore. Like The Matrix and The Game after it, Total Recall asks the question, "What is reality--what exists, or what we choose to?" And the answer, appropriately enough, is "Explosions and titties!" High by Schwarzenegger standards, average by normal standards. RATING: 3 PROS: Great pacing, relatively good script CONS: Bad acting, really dated compared to older stuff like Blade Runner and Robocop ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100802/
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Oct 15, 2004 07:10
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Total Recall should be one of my favourite films, however it is let down by Governor Schwarzenegger's lack of acting ability. The plot is superb, the special effects are amazing for their time, although by today's standards some of the vehicles are pretty  All in all I would say the film is definitely worth a watch, but I am so disgusted at the decision to include Schwarzenegger as the lead character, that I cannot be bothered to write a decent review.
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Oct 18, 2004 15:12
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