hard to remember five minutes afterward

Rating: 3/10 (10 January 2011)

It's an ironic title for such a forgettable movie, reportedly one of the most expensive ever made, although most of the over-bloated budget, wasted on gratuitous special effects, would have been better spent on a halfway decent screenplay and basic elocution lessons for Arnold Schwarzenegger. The former Mr. Olympia certainly has the beefcake proportions of a matinée idol, but none of the necessary charisma: he mutters expletives, sprays bullets around, and thereby exhausts his acting skills.
The almost incoherent plot, concerning mind games on the Martian colonies in the near future, is just an excuse for an endless, irritating succession of chases and mayhem, directed by Paul Verhoeven with a lack of excitement matched only by his lack of imagination. Verhoeven hasn't enough sense of style to bring even a token gesture of fun into the (mean-spirited) action sequences, and when Arnold uses an innocent bystander to block a villain's bullets we're meant to applaud his quick thinking.
The script was based (very loosely, one suspects) on a Philip K. Dick story, but it's a shame artificial memory transplants like those featured throughout the film couldn't be used on the audience to leave a better impression.