Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as Quaid, a 2084 construction
worker haunted by dreams of Mars in this crowd-pleasing science fiction
spectacle. Against the wishes of his sexy blonde wife (Sharon Stone),
Quaid goes to Rekall, a company that implants artificial memories, so he
can "remember" visiting the red planet that is now being settled by
human inhabitants. However, Quaid is actually an amnesiac secret agent
from Mars--or is he? Enemy agents led by a thug named Richter (Michael
Ironside) start trying to kill him before Quaid remembers anything more.
Bullets and bone-crunching mayhem follow in large doses as Quaid heads
to Mars to deal with mutants, ancient alien races, and Cohagen (Ronny
Cox), a greedy capitalist controlling the colonists' air supply, in an
effort to remember his real identity. TOTAL RECALL is based on the story
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick and was a big
box-office hit, helping to firmly establish director Paul Verhoeven as a
specialist in darkly satiric, blood-drenched genre films. His next
stop: BASIC INSTINCT, also with Stone.