Review for Total Recall: Ultimate Rekall Edition

Introduction

Pointless remakes! I can understand remaking a lacklustre movie, making a second attempt to get it right, as happened with Ocean's Eleven. I can understand taking another shot at a movie that was made so long ago that it just isn't relevant any more, and I can understand adapting a foreign feature so that it will find a greater audience in the native language. But why remake something that was close to perfect in the first place? Is Hollywood truly so bankrupt of ideas? Halloween, The Thing, Psycho, Spider-Man, apparently they are remaking Robocop as well now. In a few weeks, another Paul Verhoeven sci-fi action classic will get recycled on the big screen in the form of Total Recall. You may have thought that they were going back to the original source material and adapting that afresh, but I've seen the trailer now, and it looks almost like a scene for scene remake of the original movie, albeit without any of the Mars plot, and with added Minority Report VFX. They've even kept the triple breasted whore apparently. Just... why?


If there is any benefit to this soulless plundering of cinema past, it's that the original properties get revisited as a result. Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall starring eighties action icon Arnold Schwarzenegger has had a 20th anniversary restoration (although it's been 22 years since its release now), and that new print is coming out on DVD, Blu-ray and it's had a limited cinema run, ahead of the Colin Farrell remake. Although at this time, you may also be wondering if we really need this Total Recall again. My own personal home cinema experience with this fave sci-fi movie of mine has followed the pan and scan video, the widescreen VHS, the initial barebones DVD release back around 2001, and then in 2008, Optimum, as StudioCanal was then known, re-released a feature packed DVD to coincide with the film's Blu-ray debut. I didn't have Blu-ray back then, but I did get the DVD for review and found it to be not quite as feature packed as the old 2-disc special edition DVD from Momentum that I had missed out on. A collection that was on the verge of being deleted, I hastened to purchase it, and it has been on my to-watch pile ever since. I haven't even had a chance to watch it yet, and StudioCanal announce the new Ultimate Rekall Blu-ray. This release will have to really be something special to convince people like me to sextuple dip. I didn't get that first Blu-ray, but it turns out those early Blu-rays had a few issues that needed addressing.


Based on Philip K. Dick's short story, "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", Total Recall has been described as the thinking man's action movie, and over twenty years on the description still fits. Doug Quaid is a lowly construction worker, but happily married to a gorgeous blonde and comfortably well off, he certainly has no reason to complain. Except that while his days are spent in the arms of his wife, at night in his dreams, he's on Mars trekking across the landscape with a sleazy but demure brunette. It's an obsession he can't get free off, and he can't fulfil, as his wife hates the idea of travelling to Mars. So contrary to all advice, he pays a visit to Rekall, a company that specialises in implanted vacations, memories that are installed in the mind, which are indistinguishable from the real thing.

Something goes wrong with Quaid's procedure. Suddenly he's a secret agent named Hauser, complaining his cover's been blown. The Rekall employees try to cover it up with a quick mind-wipe, but when the amnesiac Quaid gets home there are men with guns waiting for him. Just who is Quaid, and what's his connection to Mars? Quaid will have to travel to the red planet to find out, but it's a world of unrest, the greedy Cohaagen works the people to the bone to profit from the mines, while keeping an ancient secret at the heart of the planet covered up. It's a secret that Quaid has buried in the back of his mind, and Cohaagen will do what it takes to stop it from getting out. But if Quaid can work out what he's forgotten, then the truth will change the face of Mars forever.

Picture

Total Recall gets a 1.85:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. For a film made in 1990, Total Recall stands up pretty well on Blu-ray, although it does come from a period when many mainstream Hollywood movies were shot on film stock with comparatively subdued colours and a higher level of grain. That comes through in the image on the disc, which is thankfully unmolested by obvious DNR. You won't get the impact and pop of modern films on the format, and the image does look a little flat at times. There are moments of softness, but detail levels are excellent, and the colours definitely are richer. The only real loss of detail comes in twilight scenes, not truly dark, and not in full brightness. The opening scene with Doug and Lori after he wakes from his nightmare is an example, but such moments are rare. The one drawback in this high definition perfection is that it makes the seams in the special effects in this pre-CGI age more obvious, but that's what suspending disbelief is for.

Incidentally there is a restoration featurette in the extras, offering a before and after comparison of the movie. The contrast between the two versions is breathtaking, and the new version looks as if they went back and colourised a monochrome movie. Convinced that they were exaggerating for effect, I went back to my 2005 SE DVD and gave that a spin, and they weren't kidding. Those old Total Recall discs from 2008 and before really did look that bad. In this Ultimate Rekall Edition, the red planet actually is red, not pink.

Sound

Total Recall on Blu-ray offers you the options of English, French and German in DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround format, with optional subtitles in those languages as well. I went with the English track quite naturally and found it to be a pleasant enough experience, if a little representative of the film's original stereo roots. The action and dialogue is primarily a front-focussed affair, with the surrounds used mostly for ambience. I'd forgotten how awesome the Jerry Goldsmith music was for Total Recall, but the high definition audio gives it a lot more clarity and impact than the DVD.

Extras

The Blu-ray offers something old and something new, with its choice of French, German, and English animated menus leading to the following extras.

The audio commentary is the old one from the Special Edition DVD, with Arnold "State the Obvious" Schwarzenegger drowning out Paul Verhoeven. Also on the disc in SD format is the 8-minute Making of featurette that was created for the film's release back in 1990, which you will find on the original DVD and the subsequent re-releases. The Imagining Total Recall Featurette is taken from the Special Edition (and the 2008 release), and was recorded back in 2001. It runs to 30 minutes and features recollections from the cast and crew. The trailer for the movie is here and lasts 2 minutes.


New to this release are the following.

Total Recall: The Special Effects lasts 23 minutes, and is presented in 1080i HD. It was recorded in 2010, and goes into detail about the miniatures used in the film, as well as the work that went into the CGI scanner sequence.

The Interview with Director Paul Verhoeven was recorded in 2012, and is a 35 minute, in depth retrospective about the movie. There's some behind the scenes footage here, and a bit of repetition from that 2001 featurette, but time offers more of a detached perspective about the film, and some interesting expectations of the forthcoming remake.

The restoration comparison lasts 5 minutes, is HD, and does what it says on the tin.

Finally the photo gallery is a minute long slideshow of promotional stills.

Total Recall: The Ultimate Rekall Edition is one of those triple play releases with Blu-ray, DVD and digital copy combined. You should know that the DVD in this collection has the new restored print of the film presented in PAL format and running to 109 minutes due to speed-up. You have English and German menus to choose from, and English and German DD 5.1 audio and subtitles. Extras on the DVD include the Interview with Paul Verhoeven, the Total Recall Special Effects featurette, the audio commentary and the trailer.

Conclusion

This is the third time that I am reviewing Total Recall, and with any luck it will be the last, as I put aside my mental note to take a look at that old Special Edition release, which will now most likely forever lie on my to-watch pile, lamentably unwatched. Having said that, there is still reason enough to hold onto that SE, as while this new Blu-ray release does offer some extra features newly recorded for its debut, that SE still has some extra features that are unique to that 2-disc release, most notably a Jost Vacano audio commentary on the film's cinematography. Also unique to that disc are some general featurettes on science fiction and Mars, as well as conceptual artwork and storyboards. But when it comes to actually choosing one release out of the four in my possession to watch the movie, the obvious choice is this new Blu-ray. The image has come up a treat, with the restoration bringing out the colour, reducing the print damage, while retaining the natural properties of the film medium.

The story itself is classic Philip K Dick, with questions of the nature of reality being posed, and the audience given just as much of a mind-f*** as Quaid. It's one of the axioms of showbiz that the audience should always be left begging for more, and Total Recall leaves you wondering whether what you just saw was 'real' or not. What's more, it doesn't make you lament the experience, as certain other 'twist' endings have managed to do.


A cerebral Arnie action movie! Who'd have figured? But Total Recall is just that, with Arnold cast in his typical everyman role, albeit an everyman who works out, is built like an oak tree, and has a hidden secret agent persona. It's one great chase sequence after another from beginning to end, full of action and excitement, and chock-a-block with the violence eye-candy that Verhoeven used to such great effect in Robocop. When you watched an Arnie movie in the mid-late eighties, you were concerned with action, stunts and more importantly body count. Total Recall delivers in every respect. That it is a credible sci-fi movie is just icing on the cake. Arnold was already a bankable star following hits like Conan, The Terminator, and Predator, but it was Total Recall that launched him into the stratosphere, mostly because it took what he was best at, but took tongue out of cheek and instead applied some intelligence and thoughtfulness to the story. Those earlier Arnie films were cheesy, films that were enjoyable, but also came with a helping of popcorn to throw at the screen. Total Recall was a good film by every measure.


It's in the nature of big Hollywood blockbusters to be eternally tweaked and re-released these days. Collectors have a high threshold for new extras and better formats, and pointless though remakes and sequels may be, they do have the added effect of reminding fans of the original properties. The advent of Tron Legacy last year no doubt contributed much to the timely revisiting of the original feature on Blu-ray. If the Colin Farrell remake has had any input into the re-release of this cleaned up and restored print of the original Total Recall, then that is surely one positive to come from that misadventure, for Total Recall has never looked as good, and I enjoyed it even more last night, then when I first saw it in the cinema back when I was seventeen. The irony is that I had to rely on my beard to convince the clerk that I was eighteen, yet this release has been re-rated by the BBFC, and is judged to be less damaging to modern youth. If you haven't upgraded Total Recall to Blu yet, then this is the version to go for.