Total Recall (

1990

)

Let’s get one thing straight right away: There’s nothing wrong with dumb action movies. So long as the movie manages to be fun, it doesn’t have to do anything more to be successful. Cliffhanger (1993) doesn’t have much going on between the ears, but it still delivers a great deal of fun. Likewise, Cobra (1986) is a great action movie even if it’s a terrible place to go to for any sort of sociological commentary. Just about every Western action movie from the last four decades falls into this category of brainless entertainment. They are competent only in the execution of elaborate set pieces and witty only with composition of absurd one-liners. That’s not a complaint, but at times I find myself longing for more. Fortunately, there are some exceptions; films like The Professional (1994) provide an unusually sophisticated emotional core to the usual action movie plotline. However, action movies that explore intellectual ideas are almost unheard of. What’s more, the ones that do exist usually fail in their primary objective, that of being entertaining action movies. Sometimes I think I’m asking too much of the genre, then I remember that Total Recall is a rip-roaring spy movie with goofy one-liners, absurd violence, and a plot that wrestles with what hard questions about the nature of human memory and identity. If an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle can do that, then I don’t know what excuse these other movies have.

While, I suppose it’s because Paul Verhoeven didn’t direct them. Verhoeven is a Dutch filmmaker whose filmography has such a massive range that it looks like it was chosen at random from a movie database (films as disparate as Starship Troopers (1997), Showgirls (1995), Black Book (2006), and Elle (2016) were all helmed by Verhoeven). Though, in the late 80s and early 90s he was best known for Robocop (1987), an ultra-violent sci-fi movie with some surprisingly heady themes behind it. Total Recall is an obvious follow up to that hit, though it has a healthy dose of the surreal and hallucinogenic mixed in for good measure. That’s to be expected, as the film is technically an adaptation (not a very faithful one I’ll grant you) of a Philip K Dick story.

The Cold War is over, but in a case of the more things change the more they stay the same, the planet is now divided between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The north has the edge in money and technology, but the south has enough numbers to drown the north. The only deterrent that can hold off southern aggression (at least, that’s how northern propaganda frames it) is a network of orbital weapons. To this end, The North has colonized Mars and is in the process of extracting the terbinium from the Martian soil. All this is going on in the background, established through speeches and newscasts while our protagonist, Douglas Quaid, goes about his daily life. Quaid is just a regular guy, working a regular job as a construction worker. He seems to be doing all right for himself, as the apartment he shares with his wife Lori is small but pretty well furnished (in the usual, late 1980s garish sort of way). The only thing truly remarkable about Quaid is that he constantly dreams about having adventures on Mars, and wants desperately to go there in real life. Nobody gets it, least of all Lori; Mars is an economic colony where a workforce of virtual slaves toils away for long hours in the mines. It’s also riven with political strife and terrorism, as a mysterious Martian leader name Kuato leads an asymmetrical war against the Northern government, headed by Chief Administrator Vilos Cohaagen. All and all a crappy vacation spot; why not go to Saturn instead?

Quaid is not to be deterred, if he can’t physically go to Mars, he’ll settle for the next best thing: having memories of a Martian vacation implanted in his brain. You see, in the future your average office drone is either too busy or too poor to actually take a vacation, so these virtual vacations have become relatively common, though there are still some concerns over accidental lobotomizations and “Schizoid Embolisms.” All Quaid’s co-workers as well as his wife think this is a terrible idea, but Quaid is not deterred so he schedules an appointment at the rekall clinic. There he opts in for not just a Martian vacation, but also a special fantasy “ego trip” where he plays the role of a secret agent rather than just visiting Mars as a tourist. In the fantasy memories he will “stop the bad guy, get the girl, and save the whole planet.” The only problem is the implant doesn’t go as planned, as soon as the technicians open up Quaid’s mind they find it's already been edited by somebody else: probably government agents. The technician quickly calls for the boss, but obviously, spy business is something way above the pay-grade of a regional manager of a recall chain clinic, so he dumps Quaid’s unconscious body in a taxicab and sets about destroying all evidence that the construction worker had ever set foot inside his clinic.

Quaid wakes up in the cab sometime later, with his mind officially fucked. Bits and pieces of memories/delusions are beginning to trickle in and he’s no longer sure who he is. When he gets out of the car one of his co-workers, accompanied by a gang of government toughs, attacks him. Displaying hitherto unknown martial prowess, Quaid easily dispatches these assailants. It’s only after the adrenaline dies down and he’s covered in blood that he stops to wonder, just what is going on? Quaid heads home, intent on hiding out until he can figure out at least who he is and what is happening to him. As soon as he explains the situation to Lori though, she tries to kill him. After a tense struggle, Quaid gets the upper hand and demands to be told what is going on. According to Lori, Quaid is a secret agent named Hauser. His memories were falsified and she was assigned to keep an eye on a few months back. Their whole marriage was a fraud; for what it’s worth Lori says she enjoyed the charade while it lasted.

Her enjoyment may be genuine, but her empathy with Quaid’s situation here is just a ruse. She’s buying time for her real husband, a spook named Richter, to close in with his goons. Richter figures that now that Quaid is starting to recover his memories he’s officially a threat to the whole operation, and has to be taken out. Of course, his decision to exterminate Quaid is colored by the fact that for the past several months his wife has been sleeping with a six-foot-tall body-builder with a full head of hair instead of him. Sure, it’s all been part of the job but nothing infuriates quite like sexual jealousy. Richter even persists in his attempts to kill Quaid after he gets the order to stand down from his boss, Vilos Cohaagen (the Chief Administrator of Mars who's been appearing on all the newsreel footage).

Quaid beats a narrow escape through a crowded subway terminal, amidst gunfire from Richter’s goon squad. Despite a nominal commitment to secrecy and upholding public order, the goons are not particularly worried about civilian casualties. Seriously, at one point they start mowing down people on a crowded escalator, Quaid only survives because he grabs the bullet-riddled corpse of the man in front of him and uses it as a human shield. After losing the government thugs, Quaid is contacted by a mysterious man who tells him that he is being tracked by a chip in his head, and gives him instructions on how to remove it. The man leads him to a cache of supplies, containing a video from himself before his memories were erased. His past self explains to Quaid that he was a double agent, working for Cohaagen on Mars until he realized he was on the wrong side, and joined the resistance. There are plenty of secrets his brain that can bring down Cohaagen once and for all, all Quaid needs to do it get to Mars and link up with the resistance.

So far, we have a pretty straightforward story here, a normal man discovers he had a past he didn’t know about and is thrust into adventure. However, throughout the proceedings, Total Recall raises questions about just how reliable its own apparent story is. Right off the bat, Quaid’s adventures, both on earth and mars, bear an uncanny resemblance to the secret agent ego trip he purchased from rekall. Indeed, this becomes more apparent once he arrives on Mars and meets Melina, a femme fatale that bears an unmistakable resemblance to the ideal partner he selected in the rekall clinic. Indeed, even the very end of the movie is foreshadowed by one of the lab workers in the rekall clinic, as they make the configurations for Quaid’s new memories. Certainly, if we accept that implanted memories are possible, we must also accept that the entire film could easily be an implant itself. The waters are further muddied when, on Mars, a man visits Quaid’s hotel room claiming to be a doctor working for rekall. He tells Quaid that he’s not on Mars at all, instead, he’s stuck in a coma, and that all we ‘see or seem is but a dream within a dream.’ There’s been a mishap with the implantation process, and if Quaid doesn’t take the red pill (undoubtedly, The Watchowskis were paying attention) the doctor offers him, he could be stuck in this fantasy world forever. Of course, Quaid ultimately decides the man is an agent of Cohaagen sent to entrap him, but his reason for doing so are pretty unreliable themselves. Moreover, this interpretation is contradicted by a later plot-twist that is too good and too mind-bending to spoil here.

Beyond the textual implications, there are plenty of meta-cinematic themes on hand as well. As my wife noted, when she first grasped the concept of implanted memories, “why not just watch a movie instead?” Indeed, Quaid does the same thing that the audience is doing when they go in to watch a movie like Total Recall: he/we is/are losing himself/ourselves for a time in a fantastic adventure. Remarkably, Total Recall never castigates its audience for wanting some escapist fun; indeed it delivers escapist entertainment at every turn. The action scenes are quick, well-choreographed, and legitimately thrilling. The jokes and one-liners have the infectious corniness that one has come to expect of action movie quips. Schwarzenegger exudes his usual charisma and is a delight to watch. The role of Quaid also gives him a chance to play a character of uncommon depth and nuance.

Total Recall is among the last Cold War movies, as the following year the collapse of the Soviet Union would mark the definitive end of the conflict. It is not about the historical conflict in a concrete way, but it does capture the abstract feeling of the Cold War. Secrecy is paramount, just like in real life there are layers of deception at work in Total Recall, as higher-ups keep secrets from their underlings and expect them to just obey while ignorant of all the ramifications of their actions. Evoking the worst excess of the East German Stasi, the people around you who you think you can trust are sometimes sleeper agents put in place to keep an eye on you. Total Recall is not content just to dwell on the real absurdities of the 1980s but instead opts to take it further. Quaid cannot trust himself, not the pre-recorded messages he’s left himself or even the memories rattling around in his skull.