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Arnold Schwarzenegger goes for a trip into his memories in Total Recall |
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Douglas Quaid/Carl Hauser),
Rachel Ticotin (Melina), Sharon Stone (Lori Quaid), Ronny Cox (Vilos
Conhaagen), Michael Ironside (Richter), Mel Johnson Jnr (Benny), Marshall Bell (George/Kuato),
Roy Brocksmith (Dr Edgemar), Dean Norris (Tony)
Perhaps in 2084, they will look back on Schwarzenegger’s
career and wonder what on earth we were all thinking. He was the figurehead of
the 1980s fashion for muscle-bound leading men, defined more by physicality
than acting ability. Since then, fashions have changed: movies are led by actors
who go through hours of physical training, rather than weight lifters taking
acting classes. Would Schwarzenegger be a star today? Quite possibly not:
compare him to his nearest modern equivalent, Dwayne Johnson. Schwarzenegger
doesn’t have an ounce of Johnson’s ability, wit or even charm. Would the world
of twitter embrace an often one-note performer with a paper thin range?
Schwarzenegger got where he was because, for all his lack of
acting skill, he is a very clever man: he could spot a script and worked with
people who got the best out of him. He turned himself into a brand: “Arnie” the
pillar of strength, the master of the one-liner. It worked for films, it worked
for politics. Which is all a long intro to say: in his best work, he put
himself into decent roles in films from distinctive filmmakers, like Total Recall.
Total Recall is a
semi-smart sci-fi action thriller, directed by Paul Verhoeven with his usual Dutch
excess: part social satire, part wallow in extreme cartoonish violence and
grotesque, Flemish-painting style imagery. Douglas Quaid (Arnie) is a
construction worker in 2084, who dreams of escaping his humdrum life and
visiting the Mars colony. He decides to visit Recall, a memory implantation
centre which promises to give him memories of visiting Mars, with a twist:
he’ll visit as a secret agent. However, the implantation reveals Quaid has hidden
memories – he may in fact be rogue agent on the run, Carl Hauser. Before he
knows it, everyone from his own wife (Sharon Stone) to a brutal intelligence
operative (Michael Ironside) is hunting him with lethal force – and Quaid must
head to Mars for answers about who he is.
Verhoeven’s sci-fi work adds a level of social satire to high
concept stories. In Total Recall he
mixes in his critical denunciations of big business and corporate ethics (also
a major theme of Robocop) with an
everyday acceptance of brutal violence that is so neck-breakingly, blood-spurtingly
extreme in places it could only be social satire. Total Recall mocks our own ease with violence as entertainment, by
setting itself in a world where the news broadcasts government troops machine
gunning protestors (while a newsreader cheerily comments on the minimum use of
violence), and the representatives of the Mars Corporation have literally no
compunction or hesitation in inflicting huge numbers of civilian casualties in
the crossfire.
A lot of this cartoonish violence spins out of the movie’s
own playing around with the nature of reality. It leaves open the question of
whether Quaid is really a spy in disguise, or if the film’s events occur only
in his fractured brain suffering a terminal meltdown from an upload gone wrong.
At Recall Quaid is promised his new fantasy memories will be full of action, he’ll
get the girl and save the world. Needless to say he achieves all these things
by the film’s end. Rachel Ticotin even appears on a screen in Recall as his “fantasy”
woman. Is Quaid dreaming or not? It’s a question that is of more interest to viewers
I suspect than the filmmakers (other than a few cheeky bits from Verhoeven),
but it does tie in neatly with the almost dreamlike hyper violence Quaid dishes
out: necks snapped, bodies spurting fountains of pinky red blood, dead bodies
used as shields ripped to pieces by bullets. It’s all so extreme that it
deliberately feels both not quite real and a mocking commentary on the
bloodless action in other sci-fi films.
Schwarzenegger fits surprisingly well into all this. On
paper, he’s completely miscast as an innocent discovering a hidden past, the
future Governator anchoring a film with satirist leanings. But Verhoeven gets
something out of Schwarzenegger in this film that works surprisingly well. Like
James Cameron recognised, Verhoeven saw Arnie had a sort of upstanding sweetness
amidst all the macho posturing. Arnie is surprisingly effective as Quaid, suddenly
shocked at his capabilities for violence (as well of course or physically
selling the action). Verhoeven taps into Arnie’s likeability (what other action
star could sell “Consider this a divorce” as a punchline as he shoots his fake
wife in the head?) and runs with it throughout the film.
As such, Schwazenegger makes a decent lead. It helps that he
is willing to be a figure of fun at points. He wears a wet towel round his head
to block transmissions. His face contorts ludicrously as he pulls an enormous
probe from out of his nose. He infiltrates Mars dressed as an old woman. Most
of this material fades away in the second half of the movie when Schwarzenegger
reverts to the more typical heroic action (I suspect negotiations over the
script shifted the film into a halfway house between a standard action movie
and Verhoeven’s more satiric bent). But it’s all still there and helps humanise
Quaid, so that we are on board with the slaughter he perpetrates later. Quaid
is probably one of the best roles Arnie had – and Verhoeven does very well to fit
a man so serious about himself into a world of self-parody. Saying that, the
role is in some ways beyond Arnie’s reach – I’m not sure he is really plugged
into or understands the dark comic tone of the movie, and he doesn’t really
have the wit as a performer to do much more than deliver killer lines,
certainly not to contribute to the dark satire Verhoeven is putting together.
As a whole the film doesn’t always deliver. Schwarzenegger
seems at sea during scenes with his feisty, independent love interest played by
Rachel Ticotin (this does her no favours, as her role hardly connects). Sharon
Stone similarly has little chemistry with the Austrian Oak – although at least
she has the second best role in the script as a vicious woman not afraid to use
sex as a tool. The actual plot fits in nicely with the possibly dreamlike
nature of what we are seeing, but the villain’s aims seem rather unclear, and
the film lacks a strong enough antagonist (neither Michael Ironside or Ronny
Cox have quite enough to make their thin characters come to life).
This plays into the film as being semi-smart: it’s a curious
mix of smart and stupid. It’s got enough brains to poke a bit of fun at
corporate America, and to make moral comments on our treatment of minorities (here
represented by the mutants who inhabit Mars). On the other hand, it’s a
schlocky action cartoon, that revels in ultra-violence while creating a world
where, in universe, it is not considered extreme enough to comment on.
Total Recall is a
fun movie that allows you to read more into it than is probably really there.
Verhoeven peddles themes around the nature of reality, and introduces satiric
comments on corporations and violence in the media that don’t hit home so heavily
that they become wearing. I also have to say I like its empathy with the
vulnerable and weak – the mutant resistance on Mars is engagingly grounded and
humane, particularly in contrast to the ruthless heartlessness of Mars Corp. It’s
not a masterpiece, but as a smarter piece of popcorn fun it works really well.
For Schwarzenegger himself, this was his final non-Terminator
hit. Terminator 2 (a year later), an
undoubted work of genius, was his high watermark. Three attempts since to
relaunch the Terminator franchise (all with mediocre or worse directors),
demonstrate Schwarzenegger’s awareness his time was fleeting and dependent on
his roles rather than his skills. Total
Recall was Schwarzenegger doing something completely different, to great
success – but also one of his last hits-. His run of good scripts, and pulp
premises, came to an end here – but it was a good end. California awaited!
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