Who knew people on Mars have ’80s hair?
“Total Recall,” one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biggest hits, stumbled over a number of obstacles en route to box office glory.
The special effects, lauded at the time, seem antiquated in retrospect, and the filmmakers made no attempt to update fashion styles to mimic a futuristic realm.
The film hit theaters in 1990, but it looks like the actors jumped into a “Hot Tub Time Machine” for sartorial inspiration.
But the film’s science fiction underpinnings, that of a man who can’t tell actual memories from implanted ones, remain a mind-ticking delight.
And, let’s face it, Sharon Stone has never looked lovelier – or more deadly – as Schwarzenegger’s wicked wife.
The 1990 film, based on a Philip K. Dick story, casts Schwarzenegger as Doug Quaid, a manual laborer haunted by dreams of Mars.
Rather than take the time – and the money – to actually visit the planet, he decides to have Mars memories implanted in his brai.
But it seems memories from another life had previously been inserted in his head, that of a secret agent trying to bring down a criminal enterprise based on Mars.
Or is that Doug’s true identity, and his life as a worker drone is merely a facade?
The story folds in on itself about every fifteen minutes, but does so in as coherent a fashion as possible by Hollywood standards.
“Total Recall” offers several memorable sights, from Stone kicking up a storm in a Jane Fonda-approved leotard to the triple breasted hooker working a Mars tavern.
Michael Ironside oozes menace as the man assigned to bring Doug in dead or alive – preferrably dead, but Ronnie Cox feels like he’s channeling his “Robocop” baddie as the head evil doer.
Director Paul Verhoeven, who directed the far superior “Robocop,” tease out some smart subplots to elevate the onslaught of violence into something resembling art. But Verhoeven can’t be bothered to ground the science fiction elements with credible performances.
Schwarzenegger was at the height of his acting powers here – which means he comes across as clumsy in about half his scenes.
Timeless science fiction – think “Alien” and “Blade Runner” offers realistic visions of the future that don’t bludgeon us with signposts from the present. But the set design throughout “Total Recall” never achieves that level of transport.
It’s hokey, to be blunt, from interiors which look like they were built five minutes before the director barked “action!” to the mullets and frizzy hairstyles sported by the extras.
“Total Recall” is one movie that all but demands a reboot, assuming a new production team can marry the neat storyline with superior special effects.
(Photo: Arnold Schwarzenegger loses his mind in the sci-fi epic “Total Recall.”)
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
We must be on the same page or in parallel universes. I was just about to rent this again. Ronnie Cox played great villains in the 80’s and 90’s. I love the story and perhaps wouldn’t mind a remake or re-imagined version.
Paul Verhoeven was out front on the trend to turn every movie into a eurosocialist screed. It is enlightening to compare his anti-capitalist future dystopia Detroit in Robocop with the even more horrible left government run one today, and his use of extreme excessive gun violence to, ahem, make a point against gun violence.
What elevates Verhoeven over the mere Oliver Stones in the race for lifetime “minitrue propaganda award”, however, was his execrable Heinlein hackjob of “Starship Troopers”. It’s one thing to produce stories with a left slant, it’s quite another to project Heinlein’s work to the popular audience as a fascist tract.
South Park had a nice, and disgusting, tribute of “Total Recall” at the end of its Aspen episode.