Phillip K. Dick came to the silvered screen in 1982 with Ridley Scott’s powerfully influential, but box-office miss,  science-fiction film, Blade Runner, but it wasn’t until 1990’s Total Recall that Dick found commercial success at the theaters.Hollywoodhas ever since sought to find the right action/adventure movie that can be mined from a Phillip K. Dick story.  Frankly, Dick is the wrong author to mine for action adventure, but they keep trying to force that very round peg in our Village’s square holes.

Based upon the very short (about 7 pages) story “We Can remember It For You Wholesale”, Total Recall is the story of Douglas Quaid, blue color construction worker of the future who is obsessed with Mars, dreaming of it nearly nightly much to the vexation of his beautiful wife, Lori.

Unable to convince Lori to take a trip to Mars, Quaid goes to ReKall, a company that implants memories of vacations into their customer’s minds. If he can’t go to Mars he will at least have experienced going to Mars. In the sales office Quaid is talked into taking a non-standard package where not only will he have false memories of the trip, but he will live out a fantasy as a secret agent. He’ll be chased at every corner, people trying to kill him, unable to know who can trust, but assured that in the end he kills the bad guy, gets the girl, and save the whole damned planet.

The implantation goes badly and the technicians at ReKall discover that Quaid has already had his memory wiped and he really is a secret agent. They dump him into an automated taxi (Voiced by Robert Picardo with gusty and style) and soon Quaid is running for his life, people trying to kill him, his head full of dangerous powerful secrets.

Total Recall’s principal screenwriter was Dan O’Bannon, one of the chief creative forces behind Alien and an author perfectly willing to play with identity. The endless debate about Total Recall is about the reality of Quaid’s experience. Did he really go to Mars and engage in fantastic adventures, or was Quaid the entire time strapped into an implant chair, drooling on himself in a near vegetative state? There are clues pointing in both directions, and like the recent film Inception, the director has deliberately left out a clear cut answer. I would fall on the side of ti was real, because we see too many scenes that are not from Quaid’s point of view. Scenes that play out without Quaid ever appearing in them, and if this story was his implanted memory we are expected to accept he remembered events where he was not present.

I watched this on blu-ray, something I picked up used for $5 from a Blockbuster going out of business, and it was a decent, if bare bones transfer with very little in the way bonus material.

The Director, Paul Verhoeven , has made two films that I can watch, this one and RoboCop, his other fare as I have been exposed to it has been terrible, but these two I can recommend.