Director: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, Michael Ironside
MPAA Rating: R
Distributed by: Lions Gate
Release Date: July 31, 2012
Running Time: 113 minutes
Film: 4 out of 5 stars
Extras: 4 out of 5 stars
With the remake of “Total Recall” on the way, Lionsgate is re-releasing this classic sci-fi film in a new Mind-Bending Edition. The Blu-ray boasts a new, director-supervised and approved transfer, which was taken from the original negative. After the last go-round for “Total Recall” on Blu-ray it left a lot of fans highly disappointed. This release will not disappoint and is available for an extremely “mind-bending” price as well. Fans of Schwarzenegger who want to see him head to Mars in high definition, I highly recommend picking up this release.
The film takes place in 2084, a time when we have colonized the planet Mars. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Quaid, a construction worker who dreams of visiting Mars. Since his wife (Sharon Stone) has no plans to move to Mars, Quaid find a company called Rekall which will implants artificial memories of a trip to the red planet. However things go array during the memory implant, Quaid realizes that his actually memories have been covered up and he is secret agent from Mars, or is he?
If you recall, the last go on Blu-ray for this film back in 2006, the video and audio presentation were very disappointing. This release definitely brings a much better looking 1080p video transfer. It was even approved by Verhoeven himself as the way he intended the film to look. This DTS-HD Master 5.1 audio track is also an improvement over the previous Blu-ray releases DTS 5.1 ES Matrix and Dolby Digital 5.1 EX. 6 years have delivered new wonders to Blu-ray and this release definitely needed an upgrade.
If the Blu-ray presentation wasn’t enough this Mind-Bending Edition also included some new kick ass features. There is an all-new interview with Director Paul Verhoeven, running over 30 minutes reminiscing about the film. There is also a super cool “Restoration Comparison” looking into how the film was transferred to high-def from original film’s negative. There is decent but not amazing commentary with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Paul Verhoeven. There are two Behind-the-scenes featurettes included. “Models and Skeletons: The Special Effects of Total Recall” runs about 30 minutes and is presented in HD. “Imagining Total Recall” is in SD but still very cool. Lastly there is a photo gallery and theatrical trailer included.