Total Recall

I remembered Panos Cosmatos saying that his aesthetics came from finding videotapes as a boy in the late 1980s, when he would form his own idea of the stories contained in them from the images on the covers, which were ultimately far more normal than one would expect from these samples. I realized that this was about the fourth time I had actually seen Total Recall and it was only this time that I sort of somehow knew what it was actually about. Not that the plot is all that convoluted, but it is so consistently littered with spectacle and deviations from the usual boundaries of genre films that from a certain point on you can just stop watching it altogether. Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger make the most expensive movie in the world in the late 1990s, and this is how it turned out? Probably around the time the film moves to Mars, the papier-mâché sets are perhaps a little too much, while at the same time the whole miniaturesque corridor structure feels like an adventure built out of Legos by a kid who drinks a lot of sugary lemonade. (04/21/2021)

This whole Dick adaptation has one little hitch. Namely that they didn’t cast a more restrained actor than Arnie for the main role. I like him a lot, but he doesn't really fit into the paranoid adaptation of Dick's work with his character, even though he tries his best. Otherwise, everything is as it should be. Pace, effects, direction, and vision of the future. Along with the unbeatable Blade Runner, this is clearly the best movie adaptation of P. K. Dick. (06/25/2007)

In a nutshell, Total Recall is a great movie. I'd even go so far as to say that after Blade Runner, it's the best film adaptation of a Dick novel, this time with a superb performance by the brilliantly perverse Paul Verhoeven. His direction is dynamic and his relish in lots of blood and violence that is typical of him is irresistible in a way. The story is properly Dick-esque, dark with an ambiguous ending and that's how it should be. The visual effects are fantastic for their time and were deservedly rewarded with an Oscar. And I must not forget to highlight Jerry Goldsmith's imaginative soundtrack, which is impossible not to listen to and which is one of the best that the Master has composed. A sci-fi gem for the connoisseurs. (09/27/2003)

Paul Verhoeven keeps playing the same song and it’s not out of tune even for the umpteenth time, though the basic melody is starting to become a bit tired and boring. Total Recall is a fine wild ride with lots of blood, a brilliantly clumsy main protagonist (his facial expressions in some close-up shots are adorable) and a two-digit number when it comes to the body count. But the similarly styled music and distinctive visual signature (which doesn't always mean high quality) didn't really touch my heart in any special way. The Martian setting is overly exhibitionistic, just like the rebel leader, the woman with three breasts, the mutants, the face explosions, and similar things. The director is too over-the-top sometimes, and it's not always my cup of tea. Nevertheless, the well-executed action scenes are cool. (04/13/2007)

Sometimes, all a successful sci-fi movie needs is to set up the scenery and intensify the music. Verhoeven takes a somewhat questionable approach, unleashing his twisted taste and giving Arnie the feeling that he is playing a cleverly packaged game against all the evil members of society. No, this is not the way. Blood fits in Robocop, and dealing with an unconventional marital crisis fits in a more open satire. (07/02/2005)