Total Recall is a very interesting movie, it has some many things happening and overlapping with characters who play multiple characters within their character. It has so many plot turns and u-turns that it makes it difficult to keep up with who is who at what time and how and with what did Arnold's character kill every single person he fights ever. This movie could easily been turned into three movies if they were to separate some action scenes and added some clarity. So much happens in each action scene that some of the times I just closed my eyes because I felt sick with everyone getting impaled or shot somehow perfectly in the middle of the forehead every time. But thank god I had them open for the scene where Thumbelina, the midget sex worker lady, jumps onto the bar or table and shoots a machine gun, showing all of her muscles bulging and her hair shaking in the wind.
The film starts out like a lot of movies of the '90's, it shows a strong tall man married to this pretty blonde woman who waits on his every need sexually and acts like a a perfect wife in a man's eye. Douglas Quaid is the strong man who works as a construction worker who is not happy with his job and life in general because he is obsessed with a reoccurring dream where he is having an adventure on mars with a pretty brown haired woman. So obsessed that he goes to Rekall Inc., a business that implants fake memory vacations in people's brains. Quaid selects a vacation trip to mars as a secret agent with a woman. Guess what type of woman he picks...a brunette with an athletic body and a sleazy personality. In this moment of the film I say out loud "Woooooow" this is definitely one of those kinds of movies where I'm going to being thinking that a lot. Anyway something goes wrong and they realize that he is not who he thinks he is, Quaid is physically fighting all of the people and then comes to inside a cab with an automated cab driver that looks like he is from Leave it to Beaver. He runs into some guy he works with who offers to go out for drinks but Quaid is all shook up and denies, which lands him in a heap of trouble with the group of guys his buddy is the leader of. Quaid ends up killing all five or six of these guys all on his own using his super fighting skills he didn't know he had. Horrified he blabs to his wife back at home that he is a murderer and she starts to attack him. This part just adds to the action hero character that Arnold always plays, he somehow never gets seriously hurt but he gets bloody. His wife tells him that he is not who he thinks he is and he punches her in the face and leaves in his own dramatic self realization way when he finds out some guys with guns are coming for him. Ritcher the main guy who leads the group and who is also controlled by Cohaagen, this guy who is in charge with operations on Mars, is also married to Quaids fake wife. Ritcher is super angry at Quaid because Ritchers wife has been having sex with Quaid for pay and also he knows Quaid from a Mars mission. A chase ensues and guns are going off left and right with windows shattering and people being thrown all over the place (Another "Wooooooow" moment at the senselessness of these scenes and how they don't add to the plot at all its just an excuse to shoot action and gore). Ritcher is supposed to just capture Quaid but secretly he wants to murder him real slow and painful most likely. Quaid is being tracked by a device in his nose, which is removes after obtaining a secret silver brief case from some man at a telephone pole. He throws the device into his handy chocolate bar and gives it to the rats and escapes with Ritcher and his men chasing rodents around. Quaid also sees a video of himself as Hauser a secret agent man on Mars. His dream vacation has come true, kind of. However he was working with the people who are trying to kill him now, so he is a rebel now. He must get back to Mars because he has valid information about something. He makes it to Mars and finds out its filled with mutant people who are victims of radiation and terrible air they get from Cohaagen. He becomes friends with the comedic relief black character Benny who is a mutant cab driver. They go to this brothel type of place that has midgets and mutants hanging around. Quaid meets there Melina, who looks just like the lady he requested for his dream vacation (Wooooooow). She doesn't believe him and orders him to leave. He gets to a hotel and in comes the founder of Rekall Inc. who tries to convince Quaid that this is all a dream and really his body is back at the Rekall place and they are having problems getting him out of the dream. If he takes a little red pill though he will wake up safely in the Rekall place. To make things even more believable he brings in Quaids wife to try to convince him he has been dreaming and she is so worried about him. Quaid doesn't believe them and shoots the man right in the head. His wife gets all upset at Quaid for ruining things again and in come her hench men to take him away. They almost make it when Melina busts in with a machine gun and Quaid kills his wife. Quaid, Melina, and Benny are escaping and there is a series of action scenes and lots of shooting and blood. Cohaagen decides to shut off the air to the neighborhood they are in and everyone is slowly going to die. Quaid is taken to meet with Kuato who is supposed to read his mind and tell the rebels important information. This is when things get even weirder, the rebel officer leading Quaid opens his shirt to reveal a disgusting baby head and arms that is Kuato. Quaid holds hands with Kauto and then they are found by Cohaagens guys and the battle begins between the rebels and Cohaagens. Benny busts in and shoots the rebel officier/Kuato and tells them all he has been playing for the other team the whole time. Quaid and Melina get captured and Cohaagen reveals that this is all a trap and Hauser planned Quaid to give up the rebels. Cohaagen tells them they have shut off the air flow to the neighborhood also. Quaid and Melina are taken to the implant place so Quaid can be Hauser again and Melina can be his female servant, but being the super human strength person Quaid is, he breaks out of the chair and brutally kills all of the people in there, and frees Melina as they escape to go save Mars by activating some ice melting oxygen releasing device that Cohaagen has kept secret. They are in the process of doing so when Quaid throws the bomb into a tunnel that explodes a hole that is trying to suck them out into the Mars wilderness. The hole sucks out Cohaagen who we then see suffer with his eyes bulging and every muscle in his face stretching. Quaid manages to put his hand on the button and activate the ice melting device but him and Melina get shot into Mars and are both suffering like Cohaagen. The rods shoot into the glacier ice and like an oxygen volcano it erupts onto the planet, saving everyone almost instantly, remarkably. Now Quaid and Melina are watching the sunset and he wonders if he is dreaming, she says to him something along the lines of kiss me now before you wake up and we can't kiss ever again. Then they fade into happily ever after.
This film was a rollercoaster in every level, it was like a fifth grade boy wrote it with all of the action scenes, gore, and misogyny. The over the topness of it was entertaining but at some points too much for me. Kauto being a disgusting baby head and arms coming out of a regular man was just strange because they were so aesthetically different it made it funny instead of anything else. A lot of moments in this film are like that actually when looking back it is an over the top gory, action, misogynist movie from 1990.
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