Total Recall - an explosion of machine-gunning, gut-punching, throat-ripping, eyeball-exploding, bone-breaking gratuitous violence - is a film not for the faint of heart, though some of the rubberized effects have lost their impact with age.
Adapted from the short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by science fiction guru Philip K. Dick, it is also, however, a nonstop roller-coaster ride of top-flight action entertainment that isn't afraid to have a brain or two in its head. Featuring vast sets, magnificent explosions, plentiful plot twists and the aforementioned ultra-violence, the film keeps pulling the narrative rug out from under you in thoroughly unexpected ways that exploit the paranoid nervousness that makes Dick - author also of the source novel for Blade Runner - such an insightful and important writer.
One moment in particular, which explains why Cox hasn't had the traitor killed outright and has instead dreamed up this whole Quaid deal, is among the cleverest revelations in the cinema which at the time, stretched Schwarzenegger's action man persona into wholly new areas (though the later stretch to comedy and politics we could perhaps have done without).
