In the 90's Schwarzenegger was still in his prime and pulling in massive box office numbers. Of course this was at the very start of the 90's in that it came out in 1990.
Arnie plays Doug Quaid who is a middle class construction worker who lives a normal life. He has a house, a career of sorts, and a wife (an absolutely stunning wife in Sharon Stone who was also at the apex of her career and hotness) but he keeps having lucid dreams about being on Mars.
Of course this film is set in the distant future and the Earth has colonized Mars. In the actual present there is civil unrest on the red planet and the rebellion has to be kept under control through the use of vicious force and an increased military presence. This is all explained very quickly in news broadcasts in the film so this is not really a spoiler.
Quaid decides one day to go to a company called "Rekall." This company specializes in neural vacations where the customer can decide on any fantasy that they want and have the experience in the form of a dream. This is a very interesting concept and i sincerely wish this sort of technology existed (don't you?)
Anyway, something goes wrong during the "implant" for Quaid and he has to struggle to get out of the equipment in a fashion that only someone with the physical prowess of Arnold would be capable of.
Once he breaks free from the machine he slowly starts to realize that by going to the Rekall machine that he didn't get his vacation, but rather the attempt at reprogramming his brain actually activated the fact that his actual life that he had been living, was the illusion and everything in it is not even real, including his super sexy wife who is not actually his wife. She is a trained killer who has been sent by the government to monitor Quaid and ensure that he doesn't stray from the illusion.
Confused yet? Perhaps I am not doing the film justice. Anyway, it is a lot of fun and seeing as how at the time it was made it was the most expensive film EVER at that point in time, the special effects that they had in the movie still stands up (for the most part) to today's standards.
[source](http://i.imgur.com/Y9iLRfT.gif) I would argue that in many respects it looks better than a lot of the films that we have today because computer technology still wasn't that great and they had to use very carefully planned costumes and props rather than green screen technology that i think in many cases kind of ruins films today.
This film had a remake in 2012 that I have not yet seen. Perhaps I will do that today. It also resulted in the release of one of the most impossible video games that the world has ever seen. Seriously, look up the Angry Video Game Nerd episode about the game. It is hilariously almost impossible.
This films was great fun in 1990 and it is great fun today. I suppose it could be considered a piece of cinematic history because it show's Arnold in his heyday and the fact that it was so expensive (a paltry $70 million) makes it worth seeing. Of course the Schwarzenegger one-liners are present throughout as well.
