rdd@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Robert Dorsett) (06/06/90)
TOTAL RECALL
A film review by Robert Dorsett
Copyright 1990 Robert Dorsett
Arnold Swarzenegger stars as a rather mixed-up guy in the
somewhat-distant future. The movie begins with him having a deep
hankering to go to Mars. His wife isn't keen on the idea, so he settles
for something second-best--to have the *memories* of a trip to Mars
implanted in his brain. He chooses the company's "Secret Agent" option;
the next thing we see is that the procedure goes wrong--he starts
playing the secret agent after getting doped up, but before the new
memories have been implanted.
The rest of the film is more or less an action-adventure, with a
few plot twists (is it all a hallucination, or isn't it?) to spice
things up.
As a science-fiction movie, all I can say is that I'm reminded of
the old actor's adage about Star Trek: it doesn't matter how
preposterous the story is, you've just got to *believe* in it. The cast
here, by and large, does their best to make the movie fly. The story,
though--let's face it--is preposterous (I was willing to buy the memory
bit, but the physics in the rest of the film ... yuck), and leans less
on science fiction than on pure fantasy. The whole thing comes across
like a 50's/60's-era sci-fi flick, with many things not quite clicking
into place. Even Swarzenegger's trademark humor is (intentionally?)
somewhat sterile, although there are some bright moments.
The flick sort of reminded me of Sean Connery's OUTLAND, which was
a far better movie, and made far better use of the cramped mining
town/oppressive environment gimmick. Swarzenegger's last SF film,
PREDATOR, was a lot slicker. This one, however, tries to be a
combination of both, with a bit of ROBOCOP (which I didn't care for) and
COMMANDO thrown in for good measure.
There are product placements everywhere: Evian, Hilton, Heinz, Jack
in the Box, USA Today, and hundreds of others which I didn't catch.
They are all listed at the end of the film. These are used, generally,
to provide "texture," but abnormally tilted labels always pisses me
off. I've yet to see a kitchen in which all the shelves are piled up on
the counter, with every single label pointed straight at you. :-) If
one were cynical, one would find some pleasure in seeing these companies
portrayed in the way they were (Jack in the Box, for instance, is
located next door to a whorehouse; "Mars Today" is the organ of a
demagogue; the Hilton's the site of several shoot-outs and terrorist
incidents). And I did. :-)
Rating: 6/10, or a B- on the Summer Grading Scheme.
---
Robert Dorsett
Internet: rdd@rascal.ics.utexas.edu
UUCP: ...cs.utexas.edu!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!rddleeper@mtgzx.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (06/06/90)
TOTAL RECALL
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Violence, chases, thoughtful plotting,
special effects, gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a few
intelligent ideas. They don't all seem as if they could be
in one film. Nobody will be totally happy with TOTAL RECALL,
but there is a surprising degree of good science fiction in
what could be Arnold Schwarzenegger's most intelligent
fantasy film to date. Rating: +2.
I have to say that I usually am not very impressed by action or
violence in films. How much variation is there in chase scenes from one
film to the next? To my mind there is almost none other than the
background scenery changing. The same goes for violence. There are
about as many ways to tear apart a human as there are to carve a turkey.
It is a special effect that has been done so many times in film that it
no longer is of any interest to me to see it. I am well aware that
there are people who can enjoy chases and violence in film after film
and enjoy them every time, just as there are people who listen to the
"Top 40" radio stations and can enjoy hearing the same songs over and
over. Chase scenes and violence to me seem like unimaginative filler.
In addition and amazingly, I find I have this weird psychic ability to
know at the beginning of a fight scene who is going to win the fight.
If there are four armed thugs taking on an unarmed Arnold
Schwarzenegger, psychic vibrations tell me at the beginning of the fight
who is going to win. The vibrations work for chase scenes also and
there, too, they remove much of the suspense.
There have been a number of films that have tried to marry action
to a science fiction plot. They have been films such as THE TERMINATOR,
PREDATOR, THEY LIVE, and ROBOCOP. I consistently like them less than
the general public does and it is more than likely because the action
and violence scenes have so little value for me. What I think I am
really rating is the science fiction film that frames the action and
violence-- often making for a much shorter film. Take the action and
violence from the four films I mentioned and none is a particularly good
science fiction film. Only THEY LIVE has a particularly engaging
premise. That may be because THEY LIVE is an adaptation of a
pre-existing, published science fiction story so to some extent the
story has stood on its own. TOTAL RECALL is a new action film also
based on an existing science fiction story and starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
An Arnold Schwarzenegger action film based on a story by Philip
K. Dick sounds almost like a contradiction in terms. Dick writes
cerebral--not to say neurotic--science fiction about people who
generally seem to live inside their heads. You could not fit
Schwarzenegger into a Dick story with a crowbar. The main character of
Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is a mousy, hen-pecked
government clerk. Changes were inevitable if the story was to be made
into an action vehicle and vast changes were indeed made. Yet the
screenplay has retained much of the plot and most of the engaging ideas
of the story before going off in its own direction. Even when it does
diverge, some of the concepts it adds are thoughtful and intelligent.
Of course, some unfortunately are not. I know of nobody who actually
liked the last ten minutes or so of the film. Like many films, TOTAL
RECALL was damaged by somebody's idea of a big finish.
This is a story with a lot of twists, particularly early on when it
is still being faithful to the original story. This means that I cannot
be very informative about the plot, but I can say that it starts out
being about a sort of an average 21st century man with big muscles and
an unusual problem. He keeps dreaming about Mars. There is nothing in
life Doug Quaid wants more than to go to Mars. (In the story his name
was Doug Quail, but it was changed, possibly because it sounded too much
like Dan Quayle.) Unfortunately, only relatively few people can go to
the mining colonies on Mars and Quaid is not one. Well, the next best
thing to being there is having *been* there. The difference between
having been there and not is having the memories. In this future world
a company called REKALL can put artificial memories into your head more
vivid and believable than real memories. So Quaid agrees to buy an
artificial memory of Mars--just a minor adjustment to his reality. But
any Philip K. Dick fan can tell you things go awry when you start
adjusting reality. They certainly do for Quaid. The script is a
remarkable piece of work that allows the viewer to look at the altering
of reality to be a minor plot complication in an action film or it could
be what the film is all about. My wife came up with reasonable internal
evidence that the surface interpretation of what happens in the film is
wrong and another interpretation of the reality is correct. Clearly the
script is richer than one usually expects from a Schwarzenegger action
chase film.
Visually there are some very unconvincing effects and some very
nice ones. Some of the model work is below average for Industrial Light
& Magic and Dream Quest, but there are some very impressive sights also.
Audiences seem to enjoy the subway security station as an effect
different from what ILM and DQ have done in the past. the special
effects have been described as "eye-popping," a pun that will be
appreciated in the first five minutes of the film but also an accurate
one. That brings us to the gore. This film is directed by Dutchman
Paul Verhoeven. He is generally good but uses a very great deal of gore
and violence, particularly in his later films. This is a very violent
film and viewers should go expecting that. Also go expecting to see a
lot of familiar brand names that helped to finance the film. (Of
course, Dick mentions a typewriter company by name in the original
story, so there are precedents.)
In summary, TOTAL RECALL is a lot of different films. It should
please pretty much anyone who likes science fiction films. It should
have a broad range of appeal on many levels. I rate it a +2 on the -4
to +4 scale.
[The novelette "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" can be found
in the following magazines, collections, and anthologies:
- MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, April 1966
- MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, 30th Anniversary Issue
- THE PRESERVING MACHINE by Philip K. Dick
- ALPHA 5 edited by Robert Silverberg
- THE BEST FROM FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION 16 edited by Edward L. Ferman
- EARTH IN TRANSIT edited by Sheila Schwartz
- NEBULA AWARD STORIES 2 edited by Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison
- THE ROAD TO SCIENCE FICTION, edited by James E. Gunn
- TWENTY YEARS OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION edited by Edward L. Ferman
and Robert P. Mills
- WORLD'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION: 1967 edited by Donald A. Wollheim and
Terry Carr]
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzx!leeper
leeper@mtgzx.att.com