nan | 楠木

I watched this film on TV last night, albeit edited for Chinese audiences (deleted nude or sexual scenes, muted bad language such as the f-word), and what was even worse Star has a kind way of cutting to commercials just when the action was getting hot.
Never mind. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in great shape, and it’s great to see Sharon Stone in a pre Basic Instinct performance. She’s definitely already getting a kick out of playing la femme fatale.
The most promising part of the film is by far its plot premise. Based on a story by Philip K. Dick (well, well, ain’t that a surprise for a sci-fi film?), one of the film’s most interesting elements is the hypothesis that memory can be implanted– you want the experience of a life-time? You don’t need to actually have done it– all you need is the memory that you did it. This brings many curious philosophical questions out– such as, what is the difference between really doing something and just the memory of doing something? To the person in question, perhaps there is no difference.
Wait a minute, somehow this all just sound too familiar. Deja vu? Yeap, we have certainly seen similiar concepts in films like “The Matrix”, and in a sense, “Total Recall” is a lot like “The Matrix”, and “The Matrix” being the later film, definitely had found a lot of inspiration for “Total Recall”. Perhaps this film deserves a lot of credit for its innovation and originality.
The special effects is well worth mentioning. It’s honestly refreshing to see some good animatronics and other “traditional” special effects methods after the prevalence of computer generated graphics in late years.
However, my biggest compliant is perhaps that the action scenes are not “intense” enough. There’s a lot of firepower, but in comparison this film really pales in the face other Arnie sci-fi films, especially “Predator”. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I saw a strongly censored version.
7/10