TOTAL RECALL
Don't try sudden decompression at home, kids

  A critically-acclaimed mega-hit when it came out, Total Recall has somehow found its way into the cyber-stew of the (apparently) most hated films on the internet.  Just ask around; it always seems lumped right in there with Batman & Robin, ID4, Godzilla, Armageddon, you name it.  Whether or not it deserves such derision, I find it hard to maintain today the enthusiasm I had for this film (the first R-rated movie I successfully got into; hey, for some reason, they always, always, always checked) when I was sixteen.

Whatever the movie's flaws (and there are a lot of them), this was at the time of its release easily Arnold Schwarzenegger's most ambitious role and movie.  Ah-nult plays Douglas Quaid, a 21st century working stiff who keeps having recurring dreams of a strange woman on a strange world - specifically, Mars.  His wife (Sharon Stone) discourages him at every turn from going there, but he's insistent.  Eventually, he settles on the implanted memory of a fictitious Martian vacation courtesy of the Rekall corporation, which his co-worker warns against (apparently the process can be sometimes...damaging).  So he asks for a Martian vacation, with an espionage theme, and chooses as his Bond Girl (consciously or unconsciously) the exact woman he's been dreaming about (Rachel Ticotin).

It all seems fine at first, until the process goes horribly wrong (natch) and in order to avoid responsibility the company just dumps him somewhere.  Quaid gets up and stumbles away, but either some of those implants took hold or he's actually remembering events on Mars...and soon he's up to his ass in gun-totin' goons who want to kill him.  Even his wife and his co-workers want to kill him.  And he's extraordinarily good at hand-to-hand combat and firearm use.  And maybe (just maybe) - he's not who he thinks he is!

Based on a short story (never read it) by Philip K. Dick, Total Recall was directed by Paul Verhoeven, who throws in all the bullet holes and body parts that his name usually brings along.  Once slated to be directed by David Cronenberg, the final film we see (four writers) is an uneasy but not entirely unconvincing blend of fresh (by cinema standards) SF concepts and the bone-crunching action people pay to see in a Schwarzenegger film.

The plot mixes in a lot of cleverness with jaw-dropping stupidity.  The ideas of existing in a dream-state, visits from those who claim to be from the waking world, real personalities buried under artificial ones and the artificial one struggling to survive...these are all good ideas.  Bad ones would be the monstrous deus ex machina of the subterranean, planetary network of heating coils that boil up ice all over Mars (there's ice under the crust all over Mars?) and can give it an instant atmosphere.  Or the silly (Outland-ish, you might say) way people in this movie react to being thrust into a vacuum (or, at any rate, a fatally thin Martian atmosphere).

The action isn't nearly as thrilling as it should be, but Verhoeven does what Verhoeven does best - makes you cringe in phantom sympathetic agony as all sorts of ghastly things happen to everybody.  Arms ripped off, drill-impalement, whole bodies exploding, an axe in the gut, innocent passers-by being used as now-dead human shields - the man stops at nothing, and that's one of the things I like about him.  The action scenes which depend upon kinetic situations (zzzzzz car chase) and any sort of logic at all (all gather 'round and shoot at the hologram in the center....does this sound safe?), unfortunately, flop and die, begging for some much-needed carnage to give them, uh, life.

The effects are pretty dang good for 1990; the computer-aided looks at the Mars landscapes are convincing and interesting.  Myself, I found the little tiny effects the most remarkable - like nailpolish that changes color with the touch of a pen.  The acting ain't too bad either; Arnold's fairly convincing as a very confused hero, Michael Ironside is a fun villain and Stone and Ticotin are great as the good Bond girl and the bad Bond girl, irrespectively.  And listen close - Robert "the holographic doctor" Picardo does the voice of a nonhuman character which looks astonishingly like him.

I dunno guys, I usually find myself fairly amused when watching this one but invariably get distracted about halfway through until I just wish all those annoying mutants would go away.  Damn mutants, they're like Ewoks in this movie.

The most oft-debated aspect about this movie is whether or not the adventure we're shown is "real", or if it's all part of the mental vacation package uploaded into Quaid's head.  Most people I know strongly subscribe to the "vacation" theory, for various reasons ("The guy said, 'Blue sky on Mars'!" "The flash at the end!" "It's EXACTLY what he ordered!").  Me, it looks like "reality" to me.  I mean, why would an uploaded memory contain events for which the recipient isn't even present?  Duh.

Worth a look, but nothing to get into a twist about one way or another.  Just what it is that gave this movie its reputation over the years, I have no idea.

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