One of Arnie's genuine best performances ever.

Rating: 9/10 (9 December 2008)

I remember when I was about 12 years old I used to watch this movie a lot and it had a strange effect on me because it is so bizarre and so violent, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. Also, that woman with three boobs was enough for me to sit through the rest of the movie just to see again!
It takes place in a dismal future where colonies have long since arisen and decayed on other planets and mutations are as rampant as corruption. Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker named Douglas Quaid who has recurring dreams about a trip to Mars and a mysterious brunette there. His hottie wife (Sharon Stone) is unimpressed by this brunette who keeps turning up in her husband's dreams, but mostly he just can't get over this strange need to go to Mars.
I have to say, however, that based on his dream, which we see at the beginning of the movie in which he falls down a hill and breaks his face mask and then his eyes pop out of his head, doesn't exactly seem like the kind of thing that would make me want to go to that place, but no matter.
The movie really gets going as soon as Quaid goes to a company called Rekall that sells implanted memories, so basically you can travel anywhere you want to go in the world and be anyone you want. There's no danger because you never leave the Rekall offices, but there's always the chance of an accidental lobotomy.
Almost immediately after hooking him up to their machines, he wakes up a completely different person, convinced that he is no longer a happily married construction worker but a secret agent on the run from an evil dictator of Mars named Cohaagen.
At this point all hell breaks loose and the movie gets really good. It's a little confusing, but for the thickness of the plot it's amazing how well presented it is. Quaid is suddenly unsure who he really is, and when at one point he is receiving instructions from his other self, the self on the other side of the Rekall implantation, about how to remove a tracking device from his nose (in one of the movie's most memorable moments), it doesn't make things any easier for him to understand.
There are tons of great characters, impressive sets, amazing special effects and brilliant performances despite the occasional cheese moment (such as that bizarre mutant at the end chanting "Open your miiiiiind.." over and over). Read Volume 2 of my 50 Amazing Movie Facts on Hollywire and you'll know what I really mean.
The movie has the same brutal feeling as RoboCop, and director Paul Verhoeven has really shown that he knows how to do action sci-fi. This is definitely one of the genre's best!