Quite how it’s taken me until now to see the 1990 version of Total Recall is beyond me given that not only is it an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie for his prime era but also it’s a Paul Verhoeven sci-fi and it’s based on a Phillip K. Dick (who also inspired Blade Runner) story – well now that’s remedied and I’m very glad it is.
I will admit though that, as the film opens on Mars with what feels like a worryingly classic Star Trek looking sequence with Arnold seemingly dying on the planet’s surface before waking up in bed only to ‘soothed’ in quite awkward fashion by his apparent wife, played by Sharon Stone, I wasn’t convinced.
That was only added to by the rather flimsy feeling moments as we saw Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) head off to work on a construction site showing off his muscles using a jackhammer and then, seemingly with little real reason, heading to get a kind of recreational memory implant.
Then, there’s a shoot out and Michael Ironside turns up and all suddenly feels right with the world again and it stays that way for the next 100 minutes or so.
From here we, along with Quaid (but let’s be fair, it’s Arnold) get embroiled in a plot to cover up the existence of a free air source on Mars, which has been colonised by humans, that moves at a great clip just about holding on to its own sense of internal logic and finding the right balance between convolution and straightforward plotting.
On top of this is a great extra thread, that I’m assuming is where the main influence of Phillip K. Dick’s short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, dealing with Quaid’s memory and quite what might be real and what might be imagined or delusion – something Verhoeven and script writers Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon (of Alien fame) & Gary Goldman handle brilliantly.
Along with this the film’s world building is exceptional, hinting and suggesting at the broader situation but without over encumbering us with pointless exposition, all while establishing this version of 2084 in a way that doesn’t fall into feeling like it’s just the 1980s with some tin foil stuck but also with a knowingness that helps Verhoeven’s satirical come out nicely and the Martian red light district, in particular, stands out by adding a string dose of 2000AD style aesthetics to proceedings.
With a cast packed with familiar faces from movies of this sort, all doing typically solid work, standouts include Rachel Ticotin as Melina, the female lead, who comes across like Rae Dawn Chong’s Cindy in Commando turned up to 11 while Ronny Cox all but reprises his role from Verhoeven’s Robocop as a terrifically knowing villain.
Add to all this a sudden burst of well executed, grand scale, sci-fi in the final act and some typically Verhoeven outlandish make up effects, gore and necessarily unnecessary ultraviolence and Total Recall becomes one of the higher end entries in the 80’s action canon while capturing Schwarzenegger in the sweet spot between his early, genre-based, fame and the mega-stardom that was to come in the 90’s.
Tommy Girard 
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