Total Recall

In the gritty, dystopian world of 2084, Douglas Quaid, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a disillusioned factory worker who yearns for excitement and adventure beyond the monotonous routines of his mundane life. Unable to find satisfaction in his current existence, Quaid becomes fixated on the memory implant procedure offered by the Rekall company, a service that promises to erase his memories and create new, thrilling experiences to supplement his ordinary life. After a series of nagging hints from his wife and friends that suggest his life would be bettered by seeking adventure elsewhere, Quaid's sense of dissatisfaction reaches a boiling point. With the assistance of a group of cheerful and persuasive sales representatives from Rekall, he decides to undergo the implantation process. Douglas visits the Rekall Bureau, a brightly lit facility filled with sleek machinery and disarming yet convincing promises of unforgettable experiences. Rekall's representative, Melina, prompts Quaid through a questionnaire aimed at identifying his desires for adventures that lie outside of his normal life: what kind of action would he prefer – action, romance, or flying? Upon obtaining his preferences from the questionnaires, the technicians attach a massive machine called the Rekall camera to Quaid's head, with a narrative written about Quaid that delves into his deep, burning need for adventure. Rekall implies that the camera will induce psychological amnesia so that he won't come back with the painful memory of this trip when he returns. However, during the implant procedure, something goes catastrophically wrong. The process undergoes an unpredictable destabilization resulting in chaos: instead of merely transporting Quaid to fantasy worlds, he finds himself torn from his ordinary life as the Rekall-generated reality abruptly reappears. Doug inadvertently switches his identity with the mind of a former secret agent named Hauser. The implant procedure fails and suddenly attempts to reinforce the distorted memory with real emotions of someone else who battled to resist the evil Governor Cohaagen's tyranny in the distant planet. The failure of the Rekall system causes a violent change, with Quaid waking up buried under broken machinery, confused, bruised, and conscious but little else. Searching frantically to determine the nature of his transformation, Quaid receives news that he has been identified and hunted by the authorities and various other factions. The world that Quaid began the journey in suddenly becomes worse and twisted. A twisted web of plots forms a violent confrontation against an omnipotent figure in the realm where Quaid once began with some kind of memory implanted. Quaid stumbles on Lyra, played by Rachel Ticotin, a strong female companion, through a web of conflicting narratives about their past and complicated by the sense they can't possibly have feelings for each other in reality. The chaotic situations continue to develop Quaid's quest to unscramble the truth behind his past, discover what really occurred during the Rekall procedure, and resolve the numerous complex allegiances pulling them both into their fight. Both in their pursuit of freedom, Hauser's true past slowly begins to divulge that Douglas Quaid and the genuine identity he first sought are simply different points within his artificially constructed reality: Doug was an imagined, pre-determined identity of the past experiences already programmed within Rekall's files, not his true one. Hauser/Quaid manages to confront, through brutal battles with heavily armed police and secret agents of the sinister and highly complex Cohaagen, together the connection between these alternate states rapidly clarifies with his understanding of the artificial reality before him. Ultimately Quaid, whose existence originally took place in a far-off exoplanet, reveals that Governor Cohaagen plotted the takeover and that the resistance secretly plans for an uprising to oust the oppressive and crushing rule that Cohaagen maintains. Both Cohaagen and Quaid engage in numerous battles for power and liberation until the rebels capture and begin dismantling the massive government machinery, causing a collapse in the governance system run by the maniacal Governor Cohaagen.