Review of Total Recall (1990) by Tyler R — 12 Feb 2014

Since the remake for Total Recall comes out tommorow, I figured I'll give my opinion on the original 1990 version. In Total Recall Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Doug Quaid, a man who discovers the life he's living isn't the real one. He has Sharon Stone as a wife, they seem to have a good life together, but he finds out that he's really a secret agent, so he travels to Mars to piece toogether his identity and find out who screwed with his memory. The whole going to Mars idea seems to be a campy spin to the movie, but it's a Schwarzenegger movie in the 90's. He's good at being in interesting movies, albeit, a little weird. Since it's a Schwarzenegger movie there are some one liners to be expected and one of his most memorable in this movie is "Consider it a divorce." It's cheesy, but also witty, as is the rest of the dialogue. The thing that this movie did really well was being able to add intrigue to the plot. Intrigue isn't an easy thing to pull off in movies, but the director, Paul Verhoeven, does it really well. The special effects in this movie also stand out. The dream sequence on Mars has the part where Arnold's eyes are popping out of his head when his helmet breaks. The special effects looked great on that scene and I always find myself laughing at Arnold's yell during that part. There's just something about his yell that makes me laugh. There's also a considerable body count for the movie. If you're a person that deosn't like too much violence in movies, then this movie might bother you. I didn't have too much of a problem with it though. The acting in this film is also really good. Arnold Schwarzenegger is at best, an average actor, but in this he fits for whatever reason. It may be the plot, but who knows? I also think Michael Ironside does great as Richter. When he's pissed at Arnold, he really is pissed, you can actually see the hatred in his eyes and it actually is kind of unsettling. The only gripe I have with the movie is the character development. Some of the characters were given something, but they didn't really end up in a different place as far as characters go. All that being said, Total Recall ended up being a really good science fiction movie. It's exciting, the acting is good, the action scenes are great, the speciall effects are fantastic, the intrique was pulled off, and the remake really does have its work cut out for it. There are actually 3 things in the original that I want to see done in the remake.

1. The eyes popping scene.

2. The de-bugging scene.

3. The prostitute with three breasts.