Review of Total Recall (1990) by Ducknation — 13 Jun 2014

"Sorry, Quaid. Your whole life is just a dream.".

Total Recall is a great sci-fi thriller loaded with tons of awesome action and without of a doubt one of the best movies from the 90's. This like other Paul Verhoeven films I used to watch this all the time when I was young because it was just so freaking awesome. Arnold kicking major ass from earth to mars whats not to like it also has plenty of twists to keep you on the edge of your seat. Seeing that I watched my two other favorite Paul Verhoeven films this year those being RoboCop and Starship Troopers also the fact I haven't watched this in a while I thought that I should give it a proper viewing and review.

The movie follows Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) a normal guy doing construction work for a living but after being haunted by vivid dreams of mars he asks his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) if they can move there. She is highly against the idea and instead purposes they take a vacation to Saturn Quaid avoids answering her by saying he has to go to work. While on his way to work on the metro train he sees a commercial for a place called "Rekall" a company that provides virtual memory implants of vacations for people. While he is at Rekall and about to be set up for a vacation to mars as a secret agent on a mission to save the planet but he freaks out killing multiple Rekall employees before they implemented the chip so they drug him to knock him out and they erase his memory of the visit and they send him on his way home in a taxi.

While on his way home he is attacked by a bunch of his co-workers and with no choice has to kill them he then rushes home to tell Lori but it just so happens that she also seems to be working with the people who are trying to kill him. From here we see Quaid as he tries to figure out who he really is and in the process makes his way to mars to find the people who are out to kill him. Of course the best part of the movie was once he gets to mars as we get to see plenty of mutants that look super freaky also tons of great action scenes. I just realized that Dean Norris was in this movie as one of the mutants so that was cool to notice for the first time but even to this day I have to say the 3 breasted woman has to be my favorite also the little midget chick was pretty awesome.

One of the great things about this movie was how brutal it can be seeing people get shot up, blood everywhere, limbs getting ripped off, maybe not as much as Starship Troopers but still enough to be brutal, personally my favorite part is when Quaid [spoiler] kills his wife Lori. I mean because really when do you ever see the hero kill a woman regardless if she is bad or good so I have to give the director and writers props for that. [/spoiler] The story was entertaining and intriguing enough to make you think is this really happening or is this really just a dream and for some reason I kept thinking of Inception while watching this. The cast did a solid performance overall, Arnold was great like in all his older action movies from the time, both Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin looked sexy, and Michael Ironside as the main henchmen was excellent, the guy was born to play a villain.

Overall I give it a 8.0Total Recall is a movie with amazing replay value and is a must watch for everyone that loves a great sci fi action movie.