Total Recall (1990)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Construction worker Douglas Quaid's obsession with the planet Mars leads him to visit Rekall, a virtual vacation company that manufactures memories. When something goes wrong during Quaid's memory implant procedure, his life turns upside down, leading him to question what is reality and what isn't.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced Total Recall
What critics say influenced Total Recall
It's still a remarkable film, gloriously ropey in places (those taxi cabs are like something out of Woody Allen's Sleeper) yet brilliant in others, with its synth score and lines such as: "If I'm not me, then who am I?" It's a blockbuster from another era, when a big idea, rather than a pair of 3D goggles, gave the film its extra dimension.
The future-Earth urban environment doesn't have the hip density of Ridley Scott's L.A. in "Blade Runner" or Terry Gilliam's London in "Brazil"--and Mars tends to be a red blur, full of lethal rabbit warrens.
It's superficially of a piece with post-colonial actioners like Rambo II or Commando, which see buffed-out American super-soldiers restoring order to some far off land living under some post-junta tyranny.
The available James Cameron SE DVDs ( The Abyss , T2) aren't my favourite deluxe packages because they boast of too many text-based supplementals--one sits before a television to get away from reading.