TOTAL RECALL

PLOT SUMMARY

Construction worker Douglas Quaid has persistent dreams of Mars. Despite the wishes of his beautiful wife, he wants to visit there; his wife wants to go almost anywhere else. He feels he's meant for something more important. On the way to work one day, he sees an ad for a firm called Rekall that offers virtual vacations: he can be plugged into any environment he likes, as anyone he likes: a movie star, an orchestra conductor, a superspy... He calls at the local office and chooses to be a superspy on Mars.

But something goes wrong after the drugs are injected. He starts having memories of Mars before any are implanted. Soon he is writhing in the throes of a "schizoid embolism." He almost breaks free but the staff manage to sedate him. They cover up his memory of the incident and send him back to his worksite in a robocab. At the worksite, a friend asks him how his Rekall trip went. Quaid doesn't remember any trip. When he tries to leave, the friend and three other men grab him, saying he blabbed about Mars. He kills them and runs home. After he tells his wife what happened, she makes a call while he's washing up — and then she tries to kill him. He pins her down and gets her to confess that the Quaid identity was implanted by "the Agency."

While they talk, a squad of men headed by Richter approaches his apartment. He sees them on the monitor, knocks his wife out, and flees. But he has a tracking device on him. The men chase him toward the subway. A lot of people die in the hail of indiscriminate gunfire, but Quaid gets away.

Richter gets a call from Cohaagen on Mars. Cohaagen orders him to capture Quaid alive. But Richter has other ideas. His squad locates Quaid again on the surface. Before they can get to him he has taken a room. There, he gets a call from a strange man who tells him how to muffle the tracker signal and gives him a suitcase. The man says they were buddies on Mars. Richter's boys almost catch Quaid again, but he puts a robocab on manual and escapes to a desolate industrial area where he has time to discover the contents of the suitcase: a pile of money and some useful gadgets. There is also a briefing by Hauser (Quaid's real name) that informs him Hauser worked for Cohaagen until he met a woman who showed him he was on the wrong side. Now, he says, Quaid has the knowledge that can bring Cohaagen down, if he can access it.

The briefing tells Quaid, "Get your ass to Mars" and so he does — in disguise, just one step ahead of Richter. He is discovered, and Richter's men go off again. Some of the bullets break the windows, causing an air leak. Richter survives, and so does Quaid, who ducks under an emergency door just in time. Richter and his men also survive, but are temporarily trapped.

Quaid checks in at the Hilton, as instructed. A message in a safe-deposit box tells him to go to The Last Resort and ask for Melina. He does so. Along the way he learns that the rumors of alien artifacts at the Pyramid Mine are true, and hears of the rebels and their cause. He meets Melina, but she throws him out, thinking he's still working for Cohaagen. Back at the hotel he almost falls for a clever scheme involving his "wife" Lori from Earth. But at the last minute he sees through it — whereupon Lori and several men capture him and are taking him to Cohaagen.

Melina intervenes, and Quaid escapes again. She takes him to Kuato, a telepathic mutant who unlocks his memories of the vast alien machine. This is Cohaagen's curse. It can make enough air for the whole planet, and end Cohaagen's empire forever — if Quaid can turn it on in time.

Capsule review: While it flubs the science, Total Recall is a tour de force of filmmaking, with non-stop action, gorgeous sets and special effects, and a reasonably coherent plot with some satisfying twists. Despite its defects, it is not to be missed.