THE BIG SPOILER

Rating: Null/10 (21 August 2003)

The big debate about "Total Recall" is whether or not everything after the trip to "Rekall" is real, or a hallucination. Well, if you watched the movie closely, you already suspected the truth: Everything after Rekall IS a dream.
When Ah-nold is getting ready for his "Ego-Trip", you hear a tech in the background say "Hey, that's new...blue sky on Mars." At the end of the movie, when the frozen oxygen core of Mars (Huh?) is thawed to create an atmosphere, the sky is blue. (Quite a trick, considering that it's the NITROGEN in our atmosphere that gives our sky its blue color.)
Also, when the "girl" program is loaded (athletic, brunette, sleazy, and demure), the screen briefly shows us a full-face shot of...Rachel Ticotin! As Arnie says later in the movie, "She's real! I dreamed of her before!" So the computer at Rekall picked up her image from the dream that opened the movie, and implanted it in Arnie's Ego Trip.
Those are the little clues, to say nothing of the description that the Rekall salesman gives about bad guys, mutants, aliens, and all that stuff. The Big Clue, the one that tells you it's all a dream, comes at the very end. Instead of fading to black, the screen fades to white. As Verhoven explains on the commentary track, this is Quaid (Arnie) getting lobotomized, just as the Rekall technician predicted.
All right, now that I've established that I'm a TOTAL movie geek, let me just say that I liked the movie. Somewhat. It was no "Star Wars" and it certainly wasn't "Alien", or "Blade Runner". But it was OK. The jokes were good, especially the babe with the three hooties. (A sly nod to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", which gave us Eccentricia Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6.) I also loved Arnie's line "Relax, you'll live longer." I've used that one many times, and it comes in handier than "I'll be back."
It's not Verhoven's best, but give it a try. At least it's better than "Showgirls".