This was a very violent movie. At one point I thought the body count was increasing quite exponentially. Then, Arnold uses a pedestrian as a human shield and I thought how could this get more violent? I started to count the bodies. At one point I even speculated as to how many bodies Arnold was going to take out in one scene. It was a group of Imperial troops that served as canon fodder. I don't know which scene is more violent the one from this movie with the human shield or the scene from Terminator where he takes out the whole police station? I suppose the Europeans may be right when they think of Americans as "crazy" to tolerate so much violence.
Roger Ebert in his review cites many examples where the story or plot goes askance. There are logical errors, but, as Ebert wrote, they don't take away from the story which is the best part of the film. Based on a Philip K. Dick story, Total Recall brings up several issues that were current in film theory and are constantly debated in college philosophy courses. Dick's story brings up the question; what is reality? Can it be changed? How is it constructed? When Quaid goes to have the memories implanted it starts the action of the story, but, it also begins the questioning of whether Quaid is dreaming or is he awake? What is reality for Quaid?
This was a quandary for Structuralists who often theorized how reality was constructed. What makes us able to identify with reality? Words? Senses? Perhaps most of all, memories. What we hold most cherished among our lives. Those personal memories. Those pure unadulterated recollections of bliss, of passion, of peace, of experiencing something, of feeling something. Someone said the worst feeling is remembering a previous time when you were happy. And I think this feeling about memories and how valuable they are and how they affect our experience of reality is what Dick's story meant.
So we come to a future place where memories can be replaced or inserted. Now Quaid has fake memories or does he? The film devolves into something of an essay about consciousness and memories into a Sci-fi Action film, which I have already noted, is heavily laden with violence and, also, special effects. For films of this genre; 1980s action films like Blade Runner, the Running Man, Terminator, Rambo, etc which were very violent and masculine this one might be one of the better films. Certainly better than Terminator 2 which was overproduced and used the star system to it's own fault, as well as exploiting it's market to the last penny. White, teenage or pre-adolescent youths who like guns, rock music, and violence. A recipe for commercial success, but not critical. Hollywood must live, like an organism, morphing into different films, seeking profit, exploiting audiences like stranglers from the herd.
Yet, Total Recall was not a total exploitation film. The story was good, the acting, for an Arnold picture, was believable. And the sets, scenes of Mars, and mutants made it a visually alluring film. The best scene, and I agree with NYTimes critic Janet Maslin, is where a doctor appears bring Quaid back from his dream. I was somewhat confused by how Quaid makes his decision to continue his dream. Does the bead of sweat that he saw on the doctor's face mean he was human? Is that why he killed the doctor? I suppose Quaid continues down his schizoid delusion. This is the last we here about whether he was dreaming or awake. I guess it's a mute point. He was awake. He saved the settlers and freed them from the evil corporate dictator. I would have like to see what happens if he chose to take the doctor seriously and took the pill. What would have happened then?
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