the booming introduction music finishes , and the camera sweeps over red mountains .
we see two figures looking over a barren , and very red landscape .
they kiss , then walk on .
one of the characters ( schwarzenegger ) slips , and falls .
the glass on his mask cracks .
his face scruches up , and his eye 's begin to pop . . . . .
then doug quaid , played by schwarzenegger , wakes up .
it 's all been a dream .
he wakes up next to his beautiful wife , played by stone , and the film begins . . .
total recall is a typical sci - fi film wrapped around an intresting ( if far fetched ) plot .
quaid , who has never been to mars , keeps on having dreams of the planet , which has now been colanised .
one day , while riding on a train , he 's see 's a ad for a company called ' rekall ' , which implants memories of a holiday , instead of you actually going there yourself .
quaid chooses the ' secret agent on mars ' memory , and then the s
*
* * really hits the fan .
the implant goes wrong , and quaid really thinks he is an agent on mars for about two minutes , until he goes back to normal and ca n't remember a thing .
however , everyone he knows ( his workmates , his wife ) turn against him , saying how ' blabbed about mars ' and ' blew his cover on the mission ' a strange man , called richter , played by ironside , wants to kill him .
quaid , now hopelessly confused , follows the advice given to him , by a ' friend ' .
he get 's his ass to mars .
mars is ruled by cohagen , played by cox , who charges people for air .
against him are the rebels , who are mainly mutants .
the rebel 's need quaid to defeat cohagen , because quaid knows ( but ca n't remember yet ) about a reactor that produces air .
eventually , quaid kills cohagen , turns on the reactor , saves the planet , and goes away with a beautiful girl , just like the guy at rekall promised him .
throughout this plot , there is huge explosions , thousands of deaths ( and i mean a lot of death ) swearing , sex , and everything else that make
's a good verhoeven ( director of basic instinct and starship troopers ) movie .
naturally , there 's some pretty imaginative deaths , with arms getting ripped off , someone getting drilled , and heads exploding .
as you can tell , it 's violent stuff .
but it 's done so stylishly , and of course arnie tones it down with a one liner
, that 's it excusable .
the acting is variable .
arnie , of course , is useless , but he goes has some good lines , and in the first twenty minutes , he even act 's like a normal bloke , not like some action hero .
stone , of course , is useless , making a pretty poor wife , and a pretty poor action hero .
but , she does sex scenes alright .
ticoton ( most recently seen in con air ) , again , is ok , doing some good action , but getting her emotions all wrong .
one minute she hates quaid , the next she loves him , and she never gets this tranisition right .
so , the good guys are awful .
but , the bad guy 's are excellent .
cox is basically reprising robocop , but he 's still great in this , and he delivers the best line in the whole film near the end .
ironside is superbly evil , with an utterly emotionless face .
the supporting cast are fine , and not even the comedy sidekick ( this time in the form of a taxi driver ) is annoying .
one disappointing aspect , though , are the special effects .
ilm and dreamquest
do some good work ( such as a subway station scene ) but the model work is not so good .
some of the model heads look appaling fake , and quatto is a major disappointment .
another irritating thing is the product placement .
there are a lot of plugs ( and a good mars today gag ) however ,
the sets look great , and the special effects at the end of the film are n't too bad either .
there 's also a good soundtrack running through , by jerry goldsmith ( the omen ,
poltergeist , star trek : the motion picture ) overall , then , total recall is a hugely violent , yet hugely enjoyable , action fest , with a reasonable plot thrown in there too , some great bad guys , and some imaganitive death .
for a schwarzenegger movie , this is not bad at all .
in fact , it 's very good .
Output: P