Total Recall

Paul Verhoeven
1990

Nobody treats a firearm quite like Paul Verhoeven. His depiction of guns, particularly machineguns, is an action-centric cinema of well-oiled industrial menace, and thanks to effects genius Rob Bottin (The Thing!), when the bullets hit the gruesomely messy impact squibs bear ample witness to the consequences. Total Recall offers an excellent story inspired by a Philip K. Dick short, but is sadly bogged down by the cheesy inevitabilities of big budget Hollywood filmmaking. Meathead hero Arnie Schwarzenegger fails in the charisma department while the overblown futuristic production design feels like a Miami lawyer's cocaine hangover. It's a hoot to see Sharon Stone decked out in an early 90's frizz 'do, and Michael Ironside achieves his metier in the role dickhead henchman, but there's far too much convention - business as usual - to make the picture memorable. Of course Rob Bottin's prosthetics are above reproach, particularly with mutant parasitic twin come rebel underground leader Kuato, and there's a fair amount of color in touches like the inclusion of a dwarf prostitute and plenty of futuristic carnage. My reading of the film favors an interpretation in which Schwarzenegger is stuck in a medical chair with his brain fried, living in his dreams as a vegetable. In retrospect this looks more like a warmup for Verhoeven's brilliant return to the sci-fi genre with Starship Troopers, a movie where his glorious machineguns chatter freely.