Driving by his deep will of visiting Mars, an ordinary young man called Douglas Quiad, who dreams of visiting Mars, goes to the Recall, in order to planet a false memory that manages him to visit Mars in the fictional world, but everything changes when they find out that his own life is a false memory.
Arnold Schwarzenegger brings an effective blend of machismo and innocence to his role. Too bad director Paul Verhoeven lets brainless violence and tricky special effects swamp the cleverness of the tale itself.
If the movie sometimes seems overwhelmed by its budget and its legendary third-act problems, it's still entertainingly raw and brutal, full of whiplash pace and juicy exaggeration.
If Total Recall isn't as much fun as I'd hoped, it's not as dreary as I'd feared. I wouldn't call it totally awesome, but it's far from being a total loss.
Paul Verhoeven's version of the original story packs a real sense of intellect and brilliant ambiguity beneath the seemingly surface science fiction action tale...
Total Recall went through four directors before Verhoeven finally took it on, and four writers worked on the script. It's no wonder the finished film emerges without a unifying style, or a single performance worth mentioning.
Schwarzenegger is never going to make the De Niros and Hoffmans of this world lose a night's sleep, but he has acquired a new confidence as an actor under Verhoeven's guidance.
