Recalling Total Recall

MANILA, Philippines – It is not just the best sci-fi movie of all time. It is also the showcase of the best of the acting careers of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone. Well, I will qualify my claim with arguably just the same. Quite certainly, it is the best action sci-fi movie of all time. And, yes, this is Stone’s best movie after Basic Instinct. It counterpoints Blade Runner and builds the foundation for the modern sci-fi movies. It prologues Minority Report — yet another awesome cognate of the Philip K. Dick universe — and introduces mind-bending alternate realities which were featured elements of such later modern classics as the Matrix trilogy and Inception.

The 1990 Total Recall is a loose adaptation of We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, a 1966 short story of Philip K. Dick, oftentimes proclaimed as the Shakespeare of Science Fiction. The premise points to a future, 2084 to be exact, when implanted memories or extra-factual memories are commodities that can be procured from Rekall company. The plot hosts a convergence of reality, false memory and real memory as the action star eludes a villain to the next, who may or may not be a villain at all, and makes sense of it all in a planet Mars ripped apart by explosions and a rebellion of mutants.

Schwarzenegger is Quaid, a construction worker in the future who may or may not be the person that he is. He is married to Stone’s Lori who is lovely and loving. His domestic front is soon turned upside down after being haunted by dreams of his being in Mars. Despite the admonitions of Lori, he went to Rekall to try the Blue Sky in Mars memory implant program. The procedure does not go well so he is sent home — a different person. Quaid’s co-workers and Lori try to kill her to his utter confusion. Lori is not his wife but that of Martian colony general Richter (Michael Ironside) and that she is just an agent assigned to put Quaid in a homely tether in Earth and prevent him from going back to Mars.

While in hiding — from his ass-kicking non-wife and from thugs spouting from all corners — Quaid is handed a video of himself narrating that he is really Hauser, a former agent of Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), the Martian colony governor, whose memory is wiped out after coming into a mysterious artifact which will tilt the balance of power in Mars. Hauser instructs Quaid (him telling himself in video) to go to Mars and meet Kuato. In Mars, he meets in a bar in Venusville not just the three-breasted prostitute, which what many recalled about the movie, but more significantly, Melina (Rachel Ticotin), Hauser’s former lover who has since distrusted him believing that he was still working for Cohaagen.

Lori appears in Quaid’s hotel with Rekall’s president and tries to convince Quaid that he is in fact just living out the implanted memories and he must wake up already. Quaid senses that the wake-up pill is a ploy (10 years before Morpheus offered the blue and red pills to Neo), kills the doctor but Richter and his army capture him before Melina rescues Quaid.

In the ensuing battle, Quaid kills Lori after mumbling in full glory, “Consider this our divorce,” or words to that effect. Melena brings Quaid to the inaccessible resistance base and there Quaid meets Kuato, a mind reader mutant attached to his brother’s stomach. Kuato reads Quaid’s mind and is able to determine that the artifact is actually a reactor, which will make Mars breathable and free from Cohaagen’s control. Cohaagen’s army soon overcomes the camp and Kuato is killed. When Quaid is brought to Cohaagen, the latter shows him another video of Hausen, which reveals that the Quaid persona is a ploy so Cohaagen can infiltrate Kuato’s base and extinguish the resistance for good.

Then Hollywood endings kick in. When Hauser’s memory is about to be re-implanted to Quaid and Melina is about to be brain-wired as Hauser’s slave, his love for Melina prevails and he decides to battle Cohaagen and his men to death. It ends with Cohaagen being torn to pieces in the harsh Martian atmosphere before Quaid starts the reactor, which makes the whole of Mars breathable and free of mutants.

Director Paul Verhoeven has really designed and amped up the movie to an immense visual and auditory pleasure. The wild goose chase can even be compared to Catch Me If You Can; it leaves one with just enough breath to chase anew. In 1990, it was a real treat. Beyond that, the movie was a socio-political work much as it preempted later cinematic forays on metaphysics and alternate universes. And yes, Schwarzenegger and Stone were acting then.

(The author is a litigation lawyer and congressional chief of staff.)

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