Not Dick, but great anyway

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2018)

Verhoeven's opus is one of the last non-CGI sci-fi action films, and one of the best Schwarzenegger vehicles.
The effects in this film are lovingly done, and always memorable, even if they don't quite achieve photorealism: "The Lady" at the spaceport (aka Arnold = Douglas Quade in disguise); pulling the probe from Quade's nose; the scene where the camera sweeps away from the train window to Mars; and of course those bulging Mars-eyes at the end. I enjoy the mastery of physical effects whenever I see it again.
This film has some of Arnold's better acting, and the support cast is great: Sharon Stone as the 'wife' to keep Arnold under wraps, the sweaty psychiatrist, Mel Johnson as the cab driver with a skeletized double arm, Ronnie Cox as the embodiment of corporate evil, and Ironsides as his henchman. And that's only the start. Verhoeven really gets the best out of his staff, and proves once again, as in Robocop, Starship Troopers and Basic Instinct that he is an auteur of gritty action-drama. I know it's heresy, but at his best he's like a violent Hitchcock.
Don't look for Phil Dick's true spirit here, although the film nicely rehearses the paradoxes of when is dream reality and reality dream (e.g. the psychiatrist scene). Verhoeven made the topic his own, in a good way, with less of Dick's intellectual probing, and more action.
It's too bad they don't make films like this any more, and instead make them like the 2000s sequel: boring, flat, fake-looking CGI-laden, with competent but uninspired acting, going through the action moves.
Like many Verhoeven films, a classic.