Muscles, Minds & Mars

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2010)

Big Arnie ramps slaughter and destruction into overdrive with this no-holds-barred science fantasy.
The story is too complicated to explain here. Arnie has a series of overlapping identities each serving different environments and situations that have been 'artificially' created for him. And all the while, he is in ignorance. Until...
Set somewhen in the future, space-travel is commonplace. Mars has a thriving colony. There's a great commercial enterprise running things, and - as usual - running things without the least regard for humans. Equally inevitable; there's a civil war in progress. Arnie's multiple identities are entailed in all of the conflicting interests.
The movie got big bucks to spend. Sets are lavish and believable. Special effects are absolutely top-drawer, as good as any CGI. There are any number of the most bizarre mutants, each wearing complicated and believable prosthetics. Sound and music scores are right on the money, with a good, thumping base line. The script is intelligent and witty. As a piece of cinema it is hard to fault.
It's also very brutal. Yet there's still a discreet thread of tongue-in-cheek humour running through it.
And on top of all this, there's the often mesmerising mixture of Arnie's complex identities, giving the viewer a genuine pause for thought about who we actually are. In this regard it is an especially clever movie.
But don't ever take it seriously. It's just wildly over-the-top fun. Much of what it poses is pure hokum; it's certainly NOT science fiction, but fantasy at its most brash, so nit-picking is pointless.