Stunning Sci-Fi movie with an entertaining intrigue full of thrills , twists and turns

Rating: 8/10 (16 December 2012)

The year is 2084 , it is the future , technology has flourished, and humans have successfully colonized on the planet Mars . A factory worker (Arnold Schwarzenegger though Christopher Reeve was offered, but turned down ,Jeff Bridges, Matthew Broderick and Richard Dreyfuss were each considered and role posteriorly interpreted by Colin Farrell in recent remake) happily married to Lori (Sharon Stone , subsequently acted by Kate Beckinsale in remake directed by his husband Len Wiseman) , begins to suspect that he is a spy after visiting Rekall - a company that provides its clients with implanted fake memories of a life they would like to have led - goes wrong and he finds himself on the run . When Douglas Quaid goes for virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real, or does he? . They stole his mind, now he wants it back . Quaid finds himself thrust into the midst of a global conspiracy to find it out , as he goes to Mars where is helped by Melina (Rachel Ticotin , ulteriorly played by Jessica Biel) .
This exciting picture is based on a short story titled "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick that was inspiration to screen story by Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon , but director Verhooven replaced the satirical humor with extreme violence , in the original screenplay, dark humor was much more prevalent. The flick packs thrills , chills , plot twists and noisy action from start to finish . It's a roller-coaster ride until the massive final of the picture . It also displays lots of strong scenes , blood , gore and violence , the original cut of the movie was given an X-rating by the MPAA for excessive violence , some was trimmed and different camera angles were used in some of the more over the top scenes and the movie was then re-rated R . Acceptable acting by Schwarzenegger , he said that he felt this helped the story even more, giving a much stronger contrast to it by turning a character who is otherwise powerful physically into a character that becomes vulnerable after having his mind stolen . Good support cast such as Ronny Cox as Vilos Cohaagen , Michael Ironside as Richter , Marshall Bell as George/Kuato and Mel Johnson Jr. as Benny . Impressive production design , the subway scenes were filmed in the Mexico City subway system , the miniatures used for shots showing Martian geography were based on Martian photographs . Excellent special effects , it was one of the last major Hollywood blockbusters to make large-scale use of miniature effects as opposed to CGI, and at the same time, it was also one of the first major Hollywood blockbusters to use CGI , mainly for the scenes involving the X-Ray scanner , and have it look "photo-real". Paul Verhoeven and special effects supervisor Rob Bottin had had constant disagreements during the making of RoboCop, so it seemed unlikely that the two men would ever cooperate again. However, when they saw how good Robocop had turned out, they changed their minds, and Verhoeven gave Bottin full freedom to make his own Martian creature designs . Furthermore , rousing and thrilling musical score by the great composer Jerry Goldsmith , today become a classic soundtrack. However he had said that he had received some criticism about the movie's score that "the movie had no theme", to which he strongly disagreed, stating that the movie did in fact have a theme, but it wasn't the kind of theme that "people left the theaters whistling after". The motion picture was compellingly directed by Verhoeven , though seven filmmakers were considered for and even hired to direct the movie, including Richard Rush, Bruce Beresford , Lewis Teague was also under consideration to direct around this time and David Cronenberg who had even written a few drafts of the script before Paul took over the project.