Seeing this movie for the first time 20 years after its release and after hearing friend after friend say to me, “You still haven’t seen Total Recall? I can’t believe that. You’ve got to see it. It’s a classic”, I expected much, much more during my viewing. To think that Terminator 2:  Judgment Day was released just a year later diminishes the value of Total Recall. Whether just or unjust, I couldn’t help but compare Total Recall to the theater experience of Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991. While Terminator 2 had cutting-edge special effects, edge-of-your-seat action,  and decent acting, Total Recall felt cheesy, worn, and clumsy. Additionally, the acting was atrocious.

If you strictly talk about a science fiction story, then Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall is effective. Based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, this is, first and foremost, very much an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick. But unlike the string of action movies (Commando, Predator, The Running Man, Red Heat) that Schwarzenegger had starred in the late 1980s, Total Recall had much more of an elaborate plot, one that involves both mistaken identities as well as issues of fantasy vs. reality. Total Recall also became Schwarzenegger’s first action movie to gross over $100 million and his second overall achievement of this feat (1988’s Twins with Danny Devito earned $111 million).

However, Total Recall gets lost in whether it is more interested in being an action popcorn flick or a science fiction thought-provoking. It tries to do both and, as a result, loses a little bit of each. There are too many action sequences for my mind to take the movie seriously and too many plot holes interspersed for me to care much about the story. The first 30 minutes were great. I did get hooked. But the acting was weak, and the plot twists were too confusing for what I wanted to classify as an action movie. I lost interest soon after that, and that interest continued to wane as the film progressed.

Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 5.5/10
Character Chemistry 5/10
Acting 3/10
Screenplay 4.5/10
Directing 6.5/10
Cinematography 7.5/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
61.5%