TOTAL RECALL (SPECIAL EDITION)
Artisan Home Entertainment, $26.98
IT’S NOW POSSIBLE to feel nostalgia not only for 1990-style sci-fi but also for Arnold Schwarzenegger at that brief shining moment when he and RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven teamed up to make this superior adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story (“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”). No Blade Runner, Recall is still a smart amalgam of action and paranoia, with the valence between reality and implanted memory always in doubt. Does Arnold’s hero save the red planet in his mind only? And what’s his true identity? Faithful to Dick’s ambiguities, Recall won’t fully answer either question.
Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger provide an almost nonstop audio commentary track for this first- rate DVD transfer job, with the voluble Dutch director giving particular emphasis to the film’s Oscar-winning visual effects—almost all of them pre-digital and pre-CGI, it should be noted. The famous X-ray and “fat lady” sequences are the significant exceptions (and harbingers of sci-fi flicks to follow).
A nice half-hour making-of-the-movie documentary and harmless five-minute astronomy lesson on Mars add value to the single-disc package, which arrives in a cute little red cratered tin. Even as his once-stellar career is now in eclipse, it’s good to hear Arnold’s Austrian-accented vowels as he proudly observes of the movie’s body count, “I think it’s a record for the time.”
DUE SOON are Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt in Heartbreakers (19 deleted scenes—like the original ones weren’t bad enough?), Bridget Jones’s Diary (lots of extras), and a special edition of that cult fave Heathers (your chance to wonder about the slumping career trajectories of Christian Slater and Winona Ryder). More to our liking is Amores Perros, one of the best movies this year, which contains not only deleted scenes but some extra music videos (!) as well by director Alejandro Gonzᬥz I�itu. Also keep your eyes peeled for the fine little British crime flick Croupier, expected in October.
Brian Miller
