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The dream life, out of Zhuangzi and Walter Mitty, turns out to be a conversion to the cause. Blondes and jackhammers are no longer the world for the bulging schmo (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the recurring oneiric escape is an alien landscape of reddish splendor that turns horrific. Rekall, Inc. scratches his itch, an implanted memory of adventurous identities, "we call it the Ego Trip." A glitch in the virtual vacation rouses the secret agent within, soon he's taking karate kicks from his wife (Sharon Stone) and dodging bullets from the corporate goon (Michael Ironside). Destination Mars, a mining colony in upheaval, an insurrection alongside the "athletic, sleazy, demure" brunette (Rachel Ticotin). Behind domestic surfaces is sanguinary turbulence, behind that is existential meditation. "If I'm not me, who the hell am I?" Paul Verhoeven's North by Northwest, Philip K. Dick's Altered States, Schwarzenegger's The Ten Commandments. Dark fantasy is their métier, rationalism drops by in the form of the prim doctor who attempts to sort one reality from another and gets readily shot in the noggin. Air for the mutant underclass, meaty gore for the walls of brutalist architecture, Ronny Cox as the business overlord for the link to RoboCop. "I have to hand it to you—it's the best mind-fuck yet." Rob Bottin's special-effects bizarrerie allows Verhoeven a few choice shafts at the antiseptic Star Wars universe, from a raunchy reworking of the alien cantina to a Yoda who sprouts out of a stomach like so much dripping latex. A revolution means nothing less than a change to the atmosphere itself, the upshot is an eruption of oxygen from the ancient pyramid. "That's a new one. Blue sky on Mars." Starship Troopers culminates the subversive line of thought. Cinematography by Jost Vacano. With Marshall Bell, Michael Champion, Mel Johnson Jr., Roy Brocksmith, Rosemary Dunsmore, Robert Costanzo, Dean Norris, and Lycia Naff.
--- Fernando F. Croce |