Review #19: Total Recall
If Arnold Schwarzenegger killed tons of people, but on MARS!
“If I’m not me, then who the hell am I?” -Schwarzenegger, at his finest
Synopsis
Doug Quaid (Schwarzenegger) leads a modest life in 2084 with his wife on a future version of Earth where taxis are driven by creepy ventriloquist mannequins. Doug’s mundane lifestyle leads him to pursue entertainment from a company called Rekall, which claims to offer complete memories of vacations to anywhere in the solar system, and is safer and cheaper than the real thing. Quaid want’s a memory of a Mars vacation because he keeps having dreams about Mars, however when they initiate the procedure, they find that a memory of Mars already exists in his brain causing him to suffer seizures and brain damage. Wanting to avoid negative publicity, Rekall offers Doug weeks of paid therapy and significant financial compensation… nah, just kidding! They wipe his mind and leave him in a taxi! He is then chased by goons who claim that the secrets of his mind have been released, and that he must be killed. Of course, Quaid is Schwarzenegger, so he makes quick work of killing them instead, then flees home. But he soon discovers that his entire life, even his wife, is a lie — all fake memories implanted in his mind. He receives intelligence from a man who claims to be the real Doug Quaid that all the answers he seeks are on Mars…
On Mars, Quaid learns that the entire planet is in a state of rebellion; the lowly miners and shopkeepers live in extreme poverty, mutated by the harsh working conditions, while the leaders at the top reap the benefits of the Martian economy. The planet is run by local tyrant and classic 90’s villain Vilos Cohaagen, who has harnessed the power of an ancient alien reactor hidden beneath the Martian surface to maintain his mining colony. Quaid’s quest for self identity quickly becomes a mission of planetary rebellion when he discovers these secrets, and together, he and the mutant locals stage a revolt to take down Cohaagen and the other corrupt leaders. Dodging one attack after the next, Quaid succeeds in defeating Cohaagen and his goons, learning the truth about his past, and fully activating the alien reactor, which turns out to be a terraforming device, flooding Mars with a breathable Earth-like atmosphere. Along the way, Quaid learns the true meanings of love, friendship, and stabbing people with foot-long restraining bolts.
Review
I had never seen this movie before, but upon viewing the promotional poster and glancing at the cast, I popped myself some popcorn and prepared for a two-hour sh!tsh0w of guts, explosions, and used up 90’s punchlines. Total Recall certainly didn’t fail in delivering on these cliches, but what I didn’t expect was the surprisingly coherent and detail oriented nature of the film, which left me sitting on my couch with both a smirk of enjoyment, and an unidentifiable lust for space gore. In just the first half hour, my negative expectations were challenged by brilliant sci-fi details like the idea of memory implanted vacations, virtual tennis trainers, programmable fingernail paint, and 3D police radar. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would compare the attention to detail in this film with that of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which perhaps maintains me the same level of dignity in the sci-fi community as a Limp Bizkit fan in the eyes of the normal community. I can’t give Total Recall all the credit however, as the film is definitely heavily inspired by 1982’s Blade Runner. This influence can be seen in the Martian car designs, the psychedelic dystopian aesthetic, and especially the glass breaking bar fight scene, which is almost cut and pasted directly from the Ridley Scott masterpiece.
Total Recall is host to several surprisingly strong acting performances, but none stand out more than a young, vulnerable Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seriously, no character other than one played by Schwarzenegger can get kicked in the balls three times in one movie, and still be horny enough at the end to make out with a girl on Mars. But I digress — it’s actually rather refreshing to see Schwarzenegger not just playing an emotionless brick. Instead, the audience gets to see a brick with feelings, ideas, and an unfounded knack for killing everything in his path. This performance is bolstered the the jarring aesthetic of his opponents, notably Vilos (Mars tyrant), Lori (fake wife), and Richter (lead henchman), all of whose characters are written to perfectly embody the antagonistic traits of tyranny, prestige, and vengeance respectively. You can’t not feel some level of anger when Vilos smashes his own fish tank and cuts off oxygen to the underground city, or when Lori kicks Quaid in the nuts not once, but twice!
Though Total Recall does bear a surprising level of intelligence for a Schwarzenegger film, it does go overboard on three things: 1) guts, 2) plot twists, and 3) Quaid’s abilities. Let me explain:
- Everywhere Quaid goes turns into a bloodbath. We can still get the idea that he’s a badass without seeing him use a dead guy as a human shield until his guts are popping out, or stabbing people’s brains through their eye sockets.
- I can pin the moment where I became exhausted by the plot twists; it was the moment Cohaagen tried to convince Quaid that the entire plot of the film was to get him to expose Kuato (the mysterious, fortune telling leader of the mutants). And the plot twists don’t end there — after this, the quirky taxi driver from earlier in the movie turns out to be evil, and was used to track Quaid down… like, what if they had taken a different taxi??
- Multiple times, Quaid beats up or kills dozens of perpetrators attacking with no warning. I can see him possibly fleeing and getting away, but for him to actually fight back and kill them all is just unbelievable… Also, he literally breaks out of metal, bolted restraints when Cohaagen captures him, at which point I basically said “eff it” and decided that anything flies in this movie when Quaid does it.
- Okay, there’s 4 things. How does wrapping a wet towel around your head prevent you from being tracked by a tracking device? And why would Johnny Cabs have a manual driving stick? And why does Melina (his O.G. girlfriend) get jealous of Quaid’s fake wife when she knows his mind was wiped? And why isn’t the Mars dome bulletproof if there is shootings every day? Okay, I’m done now.
After a multitude of epic final “Boss” fights (including the iconic scene in which Richter’s arms are brutally ripped off lol), Total Recall flies across the finish line with an astonishingly enjoyable ending, which is probably the most missed mark in all of science fiction. They kill Cohaagen by sucking him out into the thin Martian atmosphere, activate the alien reactor hidden within the mountain, and fill the sky of Mars with beautiful, blue oxygen for everyone to share. This, by the way, is possibly the first instance of the depiction of terraforming in a Hollywood blockbuster film, which is noteworthy as a science nerd. As the people and mutants emerge from their habitats to a transformed world, Quaid and Melina share a kiss in the foreground, while Quaid wonders if he is still in a simulation. They leave this ending open, which I think was a good choice, and they didn’t make a sequel, which was probably an even better choice! Oh wait, what’s that? They made a remake of this movie in 2012?… Shhhhh, if we’re quiet, maybe it’ll just go away…
Conclusion
Despite its noteworthy lack of subtlety and tact, Total Recall emerges from its shoot-em-up roots as a surprisingly well put together science fiction film. The cringey instances of excessive gore, plot confusion, and surrealism are generally held at bay by solid acting, a unique setting, and well placed details. At the epic conclusion, the film soars shockingly high, despite the obvious handicap of the low Martian gravity.
