Of course, going undercover to avenge one man’s death entails Arnold working for said mafia boss and doing nefarious deeds to prove his mettle, including: faking his death in a needlessly overdramatic fake explosion, helping the boss kill other rival crime bosses, stealing back millions of dollars in heroin and cash that had been seized by the police (by means of organizing an explosion inside of a police station), engaging in numerous violent shootouts in public places, and generally endangering the lives of innumerable innocent citizens. This thoroughly entertaining early Arnold film never takes itself too seriously, so you can actually find yourself halfway believing a plot where disgraced former FBI agent Mark Kaminsky goes back undercover to seek revenge on a Chicago mafia boss who killed the son of a colleague. Well, except for the part where Mars develops a working atmosphere in, like, 90 seconds – I don’t care if it’s part of his fantasy or not, it’s just freaking ridiculous.įigures I’ve worked myself into such a tizzy over the film in which Arnold memorably asks, “If I’m not me, who the hell am I?” So, is Arnold really an inter-planetary spy or merely a bored construction worker going through a mid-life crisis? If the answer is the latter, and everything that happens in the film is part of the overly elaborate fantasy that Schwarzenegger has paid for, then you could argue that it is one of the more believable entries in his filmography. However, there is the distinct possibility that the entire film is a dream conjured up by Arnold as part of his Rekall vacation – and, by that logic, it could be argued that the film is completely plausible. Dick story, and very strongly based on the concept of “Let’s put Arnold Schwarzenegger on fucking Mars.” Director Paul Verhoeven ( Robocop, Starship Troopers) wisely had the foresight to set the film in the distant future of 2084, because he included a lot of bat-shit crazy elements that (unfortunately) have yet to surface in modern society: vacations that exist only in the mind, slum colonies on Mars, affordable hologram technology, three-breasted hookers, and telepathic stomach mutants. The film is very loosely based on a Philip K. Total Recall is the oddest (and, in my opinion, best) film in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s oeuvre, a potent hybrid of grisly action and mind-probing science fiction.
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