Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #892 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-08-29
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Subtitled
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
This science fiction blockbuster from 1990 began its production life as a very different movie than the one that was released. An adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," Total Recall was originally conceived of with Richard Dreyfuss starring as a Walter Mitty-like character who experiences a variety of artificially induced fantasies. The movie we know is a mega-budget action epic set on Mars. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a normal working man who discovers that his entire reality has been invented to conceal a plot of planetary domination. Oscar-winning special effects and violent action propel the twisting plot, in which Arnold manipulates his manipulators in a world of dazzling high technology. Director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) indulges his usual penchant for gratuitous bloodshed, but the movie has enough cleverness to rise above its excesses. --Jeff Shannon

Amazon.com
This science fiction blockbuster from 1990 began its production life as a very different movie than the one that was released. An adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," Total Recall was originally conceived of with Richard Dreyfuss starring as a Walter Mitty-like character who experiences a variety of artificially induced fantasies. The movie we know is a mega-budget action epic set on Mars. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a normal working man who discovers that his entire reality has been invented to conceal a plot of planetary domination. Oscar-winning special effects and violent action propel the twisting plot, in which Arnold manipulates his manipulators in a world of dazzling high technology. Director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) indulges his usual penchant for gratuitous bloodshed, but the movie has enough cleverness to rise above its excesses. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
This fifty-million-dollar science-fiction thriller is full of relentless action and spectacular effects, and it's no fun at all. It's as heavy-spirited as its star, Arnold Schwarzenegger: imposing and implacable, like the killer robot Arnold played (or embodied) in "The Terminator." The script, by Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, and Gary Goldman, is based on a story by Philip K. Dick; the plot keeps twisting and turning, but we stop following it before the picture is half over. It's just a frame for meaty action sequences-a skeleton nestled deep inside ballooning muscles. The director, Paul Verhoeven ("RoboCop"), composes striking images, but they're oppressive and completely impersonal: every weird angle, every closeup of a face contorted with pain, every splash of bright-red blood is an effect borrowed from horror comics. The picture itself is a terminator: when it's over, you feel as if the life had been pounded out of you, and you never want to go to the movies again. Also with Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, and Rachel Ticotin. Cinematography by Jost Vacano. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

So whatever your name is, get ready for a big surprise: YOU are not YOU, You are ME.
Total Recall is certainly imaginative. I've seen it twice now, and I STILL don't understand it. I think you could watch this film a few times, and still have questions that you needed answered. But it plays with your mind, and leaves you racking your brains, wondering if what you just saw actually happened.

In my opinion, this is not Arnie's best movie. Maybe it's the character I'm not sure. And normally I love Arnie in movies. Just didn't get this one. Mind you, I don't often understand films that are based on Philip K Dick stories - does anybody? This is based on 'We'll Remember It For You Wholesale'.

Arnie plays Doug Quaid, a construction worker, who's bored with his uneventful life, but not with his nymphomaniac wife (Sharon Stone). For some reason, he's fascinated by Mars, to the extent of dreaming about it. Dreaming that he's there, with another woman. There's a way he can get a 'vacation' implanted into his memory, and with a bunch of extras - like being a secret agent for example.

Once unconscious, Quaid wakes up in a rage, claiming he's no Quaid, but a man called Hauser. (Anne of Green Gables fans, watch out in these scenes, for a character called Doctor Lull, who was played by Rosemary Dunsmore, who played Katherine Brooke in the Anne Of Green Gables sequel.) But the technicians haven't even begun to implant the vacation yet. Blacking out again, and waking up some time later, he's confused. His once loving wife is out to kill him, as well as his colleagues, and he has some unfinished business on Mars. Despite the fact he's never been there you understand.

It's from here that the film skews into a totally different plot and left me completed puzzled. A later scene involves Doctor Edgemar coming into the so called vacation to tell Quaid/Hauser that he's had a schizoid embolism back in the chair when he was getting the implant. This is quite possibly the point where I definitely started to lose the thread of the film - as well as being confused about whether Quaid was Hauser, or Hauser was Quaid, something happens in this scene (I won't give it away) which completely confused me.

In a way, it's good because it leaves the viewer to decide what actually happens. The viewer can decide whether or not the film is a dream, or a reality, whether Quaid gets lobotomised or not, whether Quaid is Quaid or Hauser etc. But for simple minds like mine, it's left totally bamboozled.

Whereas I did enjoy what I could understand of the movie, the reason I'm giving it a low rating, is because it's simply not my favourite Arnie movie.

The movie transfers well onto blu ray, and some additional scenes (more footage of Mars for example) would have looked amazing in high definition.

Total Disappointment!
One of the best action movies I've seen but ouch on the blu ray quality. Very disappointed! If you have the special limited edition on DVD, keep it and stay away from this blu ray.

An enjoyable couple of hours.
Sci-fi actioner set in the year 2084 in which Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker who discovers that his memory has been erased and that he had a secret life on Mars that he cannot remember and which follows Schwarzenegger's quest as he travels to Mars to find out what he has forgotten, all the while trying to avoid people who are trying to kill him because of what he now knows. A good sci-fi B-movie directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring the ever irrepressible Schwarzenegger in the kind of sci-fi action role that he does so well. The memory erasure plot is intriguing and throughout the film there is never an uneventful moment. The special effects aren't half bad either and the make-up department did a really great job for some of the supporting characters playing deformed mutants. But be warned: the film is very violent (as per usual for Paul Verhoeven!). An enjoyable couple of hours.