Triple threat face off! (Total Recall (DVD))

Member Name: clownfoot

Product:	Total Recall (DVD)
Date:	11/09/09 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Visceral action, violence and gore in the Verhoeven fashion makes for a joyous flick.

Disadvantages: Not as smart as it could have been...

TOTAL RECALL

There is a fairly unique equation that, rather sadly, is not used often enough in the movie business. When it is, however, it provides for some rather fabtastic cream-in-your-jeans results. It goes a little something like this: Arnold Schwarzenegger times Paul Verhoeven divided by Philip K. Dick = three breasted mutant alien women, a midget prostitute with a knife fetish, exit wounds the size of one of Jupiter's moons, Arnie beating the living crap out of anything that moves, Martian time-slips, shitloads of gore, eye-stalks popping out of eye sockets and, rather incredibly, some deftly handled sci-fi ambiguity. It's a cocktail cornucopia of bizarre delights that just can't fail to be made of win and success...

Douglas Quaid (Arnie) leads a fairly bland life as a construction worker, yet constantly dreams of travelling to Mars and of a mystery brunette (who may or may not be sleazy, athletic and demure). His kinky wife (Sharon Stone) is both unimpressed he is dreaming of another women and hates the idea of going on holiday to Mars. Yet a chance advertisement for 'Recall', a facility that can implant memories providing the perception of a whirlwind Mars romance, gives Quaid the ideal chance of escape from his mundane existence to live out his personal Mars fantasy. Yet the implant procedure has barely begun and Quaid is having a schizoid embolism - he's been to Mars before, he just doesn't know it. That a work friend and then his wife try to kill him, before being head-hunted by rent-a-baddie Richter (Michael Ironside), suggests that something is desperately wrong. Things get even more bizarre when a video recording of himself tells Quaid he's not who he thinks he is, he's actually Hauser, and he needs to get his arse to Mars. Or is this all a paranoid delusion, part of the secret agent package Quaid requested at Recall, and the realms of reality and fantasy have begun to merge and become helplessly entwined?

To be perfectly honest the above is a bit of a cheat. It makes Total Recall sound like an intellectual behemoth of twists, turns, illusions and mirrors as Quaid journeys to Mars (or not as the case may be) to find himself, but whilst it uses the template of Dick's short-story 'We Can Remember It For The Wholesale' it's nowhere near that smart. Sure, Verhoeven induces some ambiguity from proceedings at certain junctures, playing on those threads of Dick's curious interest in branching realities, but he has essentially ripped out the guts of such a tale and added his own stamp of approval. Which mostly involves carnage. Lots of carnage! For instance, where else are you going to see Arnie use a civilian as a bullet shield whilst riding an escalator from his pursuers? Or a pair of arms lopped off by an elevator shaft leaving Arnie holding onto the soggy ends?

Indeed, Total Recall is the film you'd expect as the follow up to Verhoeven's masterful Robocop, just not quite as nasty. There's no excessively brutal execution sequence as in the latter, but you do get Arnie's eyeballs popping out of their sockets in one pretty grim (albeit ingenious) sequence. Yet whilst Total Recall does have the Verhoeven mark all over (a three breasted women - I'd say!), it manages to share equal space with Arnie's own action hero dynamic. After all, this is also your typical Arnie flick, with Arnie in nondescript lumbering hulk mode (well, to be fair he's actually really good in this), cracking the odd one liner whilst meting out his own brand of destruction. The mixture of the two makes for quite a compelling ride and, similar to how John McTiernan got the best out of Arnie in Predator, Verhoeven manages to do likewise here. It may compromise his excessive style slightly, but it does make for one enthralling, joyous and darkly humourous action adventure ripe for the mainstream adult audience.

With the carnage and mayhem at the forefront, though, perhaps the one disappointing thing is that unlike the neo-facist piss-take of corporate gung-ho America, which was evident in Robocop and Starship Troopers (Verhoeven's other sci-fi classics), Total Recall is somewhat less cerebral. The removal of this undercurrent of anti-American sentiment and sardonic wit, along with Dick's musings makes Total Recall, in some sense, a science fiction flick without the 'core' science fiction. Which seems like a missed opportunity to raise an otherwise highly competent action-thriller above its basic genre hall-markings. Dick's text is there for sure, but it's hanging around in the background looking a bit sad and lost. His themes are cherry-picked and inserted into the quieter moments (of which there are few due to the film's relentless pace) to serve some confusion as to what's really going on, yet this mild ambiguity only proves that the third element of the equation seems slightly overlooked in the face of such spectacle.

For instance the Mars landscape, even today, is wonderfully realised. A vast mining community of domes and structures running along the canyons of Mars' red surface is probably still the finest visual encapsulation of the planet in film. Indeed, some of the visual effects still stand up incredibly well. Arnie pulling a bug out of his nose with a nasty drill/screwdriver contraption, along with the removal of his disguise as he passes through Mars customs are superb, even if the dress sense of the future is still stuck unconvincingly in the eighties. And then there's the reveal of the mutant Kuato, which along with his Garfield sounding voice, is rather stomach churning...

Despite the pretence of being a smart sci-fi flick, Total Recall is instead stupidly great fun. A pinch of Verhoeven along with a smidgeon of Arnie ensures there's plenty of relentless visceral action, a good dollop of blood and gore, along with a hint of the bizarre. It's all about spectacle and to this end the effects are still admirable in these CGI bloated days and the pacing is deftly handled to make for one hell of an enjoyable ride (although it does seem to run out of steam just before the end). And, to be honest, who doesn't want to see a kick arse girl-on-girl punch up between Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin (calm down lads) or a midget prostitute with a machine gun blasting the hell out of bad-guy scum left right and centre? Ever so typically Verhoeven, Total Recall is filled with such bizarre and memorable moments and that is what really makes it a must see!


Overall - Your enjoyment of Totall Recall can probably be dictated by the following little survey based on Verhoeven's previous sci-fi opus, Robocop. Question 1 - did you enjoy the scene where the young executive was turned into fishpaste by the two mini-guns attached to the under-side of ED-209? Question 2 - did you laugh out loud when the guy melting from toxic waste exposure was hit by Clarence Boddickers car and his head splats green stuff across the wind shield? If your answer is 'hell yes' to both these questions, you'll love Total Recall!

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Screenplay: Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon and Gary Goldman

Cast:

Arnold Schwarzenegger... Douglas Quaid / Hauser
Rachel Ticotin... Melina
Sharon Stone... Lori
Ronny Cox... Vilos Cohaagen
Michael Ironside... Richter
Marshall Bell... George
Mel Johnson Jr.... Benny

Rating: 18

Running Time: 113 minutes

Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller


© clownfoot, September 2009.

Summary: Veroheven meets Schwarzanegger meets Dick in a superb sci-fi thriller!