¨If I am not me, then who the hell am I? ¨
I decided to revisit the 1990 hit film starring
Arnold Schwarzenegger since the remake with Colin Farrell is coming out this
weekend. I really couldn’t recall what the movie was about except for a couple
of scenes, but in all honesty I don’t think this film has aged very well.
Arnold may have been an action hero during the 80`s and 90`s, but he really
isn’t a very good actor. I preferred him in more comedic roles actually,
although I must admit he was great in the Terminator films. Total Recall fails
because it tries to take itself too seriously and goes a little over the top
with the violent scenes. I`m not against violent films, but in Total Recall it
just feels a little over the top and exaggerated as is the case with most of
Paul Verhoeven`s films (famous for Robocop, another film that is getting remade,
but that I actually enjoyed more). There are some clever one liners that will
get a smile out of you because it`s what Arnold is best at, but most of the
dialogues feel forced. It just didn’t work for me. The concept of the movie is
interesting and the ambiguity of the film is what many people liked, but I
didn’t enjoy it all that much really. I think this is one of the worst Phillip
Dick novels adapted for the big screen considering I liked Blade Runner,
Minority Report, and The Adjustment Bureau a lot. This film plays out a little
more cartoonish than the others, but unintentionally and that`s why I didn’t
like it. It tried to be serious and ambiguous, but it ended up being
cartoonish.
Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a
construction worker who feels like his life is too ordinary and something is missing.
He has a beautiful wife, Lori (Sharon Stone), but is obsessed with Mars and has
this recurring dream where he is in Mars with a brunette who he has never met.
There is a human civilization in Mars and Douglas dreams of taking a vacation
there but doesn’t have the time or money to do so. Instead he decides to visit
Rekall Inc., a company that specializes in implanting memories, and asks for a memory
where he goes to Mars on a mission as a secret agent. Something goes wrong
during the process and the doctor realizes that his brain has already been
implanted and he`s been living on a fake memory. Douglas realizes that he
actually isn’t who he thinks he is and begins discovering things about his
past. Lori isn’t actually his wife; the memory was implanted in his head and
she has only been posing as his wife during the last several weeks. Everything
is a hoax, even his job as a construction worker. Douglas finds himself running
from several men who are trying to kill him and discovers a clue about his
past. He`s actually a secret agent from Mars and somewhere in his head he has
an important secret that the administrator from Mars named Cohaagen (Ronny Cox)
is trying to keep locked up and hidden. Douglas travels to Mars to try to
discover more information about his past while trying to decipher what is real
and what is a memory implant.
I really didn’t like any of the performances in
this film. Sharon Stone is beautiful here, but she just doesn’t give a very
memorable performance. Arnold Schwarzenegger has some funny moments but he just
can`t play the serious parts very well. Ronny Cox and Michael Ironside play one
dimensional villains and the actor who plays the taxi driver, Benny, is just
terrible and obnoxious. The story didn’t work for me either so there were very
few things I liked about Total Recall. They had some original and interesting
ideas, but they just weren’t able to work them out in a cohesive manner. The
science fiction and futuristic part of the film actually is what I enjoyed the
most about it, but some of the effects were a little too far out. The scenes
where some of the characters are being inflected by the atmosphere in Mars are
way too cartoonish for my taste. Total Recall isn’t a terrible film, it has its
entertaining moments with some good action scenes, but I just don’t think it`s
a movie worth remaking.
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