Brutal action from the beginning of 1990's

Rating: 8/10 (13 November 2005)

I like brutal action movies and Total Recall is just that: bloody and brutal and well directed.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Dennis Quid, a construction worker who learns, after a visit to Rekall memory travel office, that his whole life is just a planted memory. Soon everyone is out to get him and he must head to Mars to find out what really is going on.
The main level of the story is the action. Arnold and co. swipe baddies from left and right and we are shown these grotesque mutants and special effects.
The more subtle level of the story is asking us, if everything shown to us is just a dream, and his wife (Sharon Stone) really wasn't out to kill him. That there really wasn't an ancient martian machinery beneath the surface, no real conspiracy at all. Just a man dreaming.
I'm pretty sure Arnold fans like the movie, like I did. Sure it has some glitches and most of the stuff presented in it is pretty unbelievable, but the film works, even though some of the effects are showing their age.