Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11016 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-01-02
• Format: NTSC

Additional Features
Director Paul Verhoeven and star Arnold Schwarzenegger have their own ideas about what's really going on in Total Recall, and offer an entertaining commentary track on Artisan's special limited edition. They make their case, to the glee of conspiracy buffs, by pointing out every clue and discussing every twist in perspective. The original documentary featurette "Imagining Total Recall" crams dozens of interviews into a tight, if brief, 30-minute program covering the entire production history, and "Visions of Mars" is a too-brief six-minute piece on the real red planet. Along with the galleries of storyboards and conceptual art and production stills are the complete "Rekall Virtual Vacation" clips glimpsed early in the film. The collector's metal "Mars" case is a fancy tobacco tin with a cratered surface, not particularly practical but a great display piece. --Sean Axmaker

Amazon.com Essential Video
This science fiction blockbuster from 1990 began its production life as a very different movie than the one that was released. An adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," Total Recall was originally conceived of with Richard Dreyfuss starring as a Walter Mitty-like character who experiences a variety of artificially induced fantasies. The movie we know is a mega-budget action epic set on Mars. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a normal working man who discovers that his entire reality has been invented to conceal a plot of planetary domination. Oscar-winning special effects and violent action propel the twisting plot, in which Arnold manipulates his manipulators in a world of dazzling high technology. Director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) indulges his usual penchant for gratuitous bloodshed, but the movie has enough cleverness to rise above its excesses. --Jeff Shannon