Total Recall (1990)

WORK – No, but say, is it good or not?

2048. Haunted by a nightmare that drives him every night on Mars, Doug Quaid addresses a laboratory, Recall, which offers him to materialize his dream through a powerful hallucinogen. But the experience derails: the drug awakens in him the memory of a real stay on Mars, when he was the most feared agent of the cruel Coohagen. Quaid decides to go back to Mars...

Muscle but not decerebrated, this first adaptation of the original news by Philip K. Dick We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is a mythical science fiction film where one finds a great form Arnold Schwarzenegger, actresses filled with sex appeal, brutal and bloody scenes of action, a futuristic universe well-fought (the sequences on the planet Mars above all) and an ingenious scenario that mixes many themes like freedom, oppression, revolution and difference while playing on the dream-awakened paradox so dear to its author. A cult science fiction work from worship!

IMAGE – Everyone's beautiful, are you sure?

Restored from a new scan of the 35 mm negative, the image hits with the adjustment of its colors (globally more red with many accented hues), the punch of its lights, the precision of its details (undeniably UHD input) and the cleanliness of its master. However, bitrate falls severely from time to time, causing inconvenience (*) depending on your setup!

⚠ (*) On my main installation (Philips 65OLED804 + Oppo UDP-203 Audiocom Reference in Dolby Vision), this disc does not suffer from any compression concerns. While on my secondary installation (Philips 55POS9002 + Panasonic DP-UB420 in HDR10), compressive problems surface like the appearance of unsightly macroblocks on a handful of planes. Therefore, as it is customary with the Studiocanal editor, Dolby Vision encoding is to be preferred (the dedicated layer to strengthen compression). But something new, it would seem that readers of the Panasonic brand (information relayed by many owners) encounter problems with the authoring of the latest titles from this studio (Serpico, The Three Days of the Condor, Total Recall, etc.) with among other joyous issues of launch (his absence at the start of the film), freezes, blockages at the end of the program (with late return to the main menu) and more problematic compression (would it be due to a reading concern encountered when applying dynamic metadata?). Let's cross our fingers for the next arrival of a corrective MAJ.

SON – He who has ears to hear, hear!

Presented in Dolby Atmos, this remix drastically rejuvenates the original soundtrack thanks to its large assets... such as spatialization that benefits from a certain horizontal/vertical opening (cf. speaker announcements). « balanced » and a wider score. Nevertheless, low frequencies preferred to stay on Earth rather than travel to planet Mars.

CONCLUSION – Every good thing has an end...

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, this small SF jewel is offered a magnificent 4K Ultra HD steelbook edition with globally convincing A/V performances. Red planet waits more than you!