TOTAL RECALL

This is a four-star action film with the content of a movie to avoid. The chase sequences are thrilling, the Martian landscapes are excellent, and the futuristic effects—including holograms, scanning devices, tracking devices, and robot cabbies—are especially noteworthy.

But the film's entertainment value cannot overcome its excessive content. Obscenity fills the script. Murder, graphic violence, and gory gun play permeate the action. Innocent people are gunned down, and bullet-ridden bodies are left throughout the film. Nudity, pornographic images, sexual immorality, prostitution, and other sexual content also run rampant.

The result is well-made but not suitable for your family or conscience. Skip it.

In the year 2084, construction worker Doug Quaid is haunted by nightmares that he once lived on Mars. Hoping a simulated vacation will bring relief, he visits Rekall, a company that implants fantasy adventures into customers' minds.

Instead, the experience awakens a hidden identity and convinces Quaid that his life may not be what he thought. With strangers—and even his wife—trying to kill him, he travels to a Martian mining colony to discover who he really is and why powerful forces want him dead.

Four stars means this is an exceptionally entertaining action adventure, despite its serious moral and family-content problems. The movie delivers thrilling chase sequences and cliff-hanging escapes one after another. Its surrealistic Martian sets are excellent, and the futuristic special effects are especially impressive.

Holograms, scanning and tracking devices, and robot cabbies give the film a vivid science-fiction world. Some of the accompanying comic quips are mockingly derisive, but the movie's energy and visual imagination remain strong.

The film presents a world where memory and identity can be programmed, erased, and recovered. Its central message is reliance upon self. In a taped message, Quaid tells himself, “It’s all up to you,” while Kuato says, “A man is defined by his actions, not by his memories.”

That emphasis on personal action has some moral force, but it leaves out dependence on God. The film also depicts a world saturated with vice, violence, pornography, prostitution, and sexual immorality. Its psychic and mutant imagery further contributes to a worldview that does not point viewers toward biblical truth.

Scripture offers a different kind of security. Rather than trusting only ourselves, we are called to trust the living God: “I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8).

Total Recall is thrilling, imaginative, and exceptionally entertaining. But graphic violence, obscenity, pornography, nudity, and sexual immorality make it excessive for family viewing. Our answer is clear: SKIP IT. For better options, see.