Very loosely based on Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, Total Recall functions as a construct for Paul Verhoeven to take a high-concept premise about memory implants and lost identity and motivational uncertainty and turn it into an Arnold Schwarzenegger schlock-fest. It should be bad, but it’s not. Unlike many of it’s sci-fi action peers, Total Recall never runs out of steam or ideas; it starts with memory implant, then moves to a vividly imagined Mars society with an oppressed mutant population then gives us a secret alien reactor that’s a MacGuffin but also a deus ex machina. The plot’s a mess but so is Arnold. It all works. Verhoeven, in fact, uses Arnold to tell this darkly exuberant story, from the contorted confusion of the set-up right on through to the eye-popping finale. For as many times as Dick has been adapted, this is perhaps where the frenetic energy and imagination of his work made it work so well (Bladerunner is another thing completely!). From a thinking perspective, it was such an engrossing story but importantly made us think about what is real or are we imaging things, which has some similarities with the Matrix storyline. Although the 2012 remake was very polished and had better action sequences, the 1990 version is classic with maximum Ahh-nuld. What about your thoughts after watching this? How did you see things differently?