Total Recall review – gym built Schwarzenegger stands the test of time

As a curtain-raiser to the new version of Total Recall starring Colin Farrell coming out later this year, here’s a rerelease of Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi action picture from 1990, based on the Philip K Dick short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale . In a distant future where interplanetary travel is commonplace, construction worker Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) pines for a trip to Mars, but his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) isn’t interested. So instead he goes to a mysterious neurosurgery company that promises to implant a vivid memory of a glorious trip to Mars in his mind at a fraction of the real-world price. It all goes horribly wrong. This wildly successful movie laid the foundations for The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , though time has not been kind to the pre-CGI future-world sets, and occasionally there’s a bit of a Lew Grade look to the whole thing. Never mind. It’s still a guilty pleasure – though the guilt quotient is a bit higher – and that’s down to the still-extraordinary presence of the massively gym-built Arnold who somehow doesn’t date: still postmodern and post-Earthling after all these years.