In 1994 a thirteen year old Texan boy called Nicholas Barclay
disappeared from San Antonio.
Three years later his family received a call from a Spanish official, claiming
that Nicholas had been abducted by a sex slave ring but was now with him in Spain.
Despite Nicholas leaving as a thirteen year old with almost Aryan colouring and
returning tanned with dark hair and eyes along with a foreign accent, the
family accepted the boy who returned as their son. This documentary tells the
story of Nicholas’ disappearance and the extraordinary events in 1997 when it
seemed that he had returned.
The documentary is created using a mixture of talking heads;
achieve home videos and convincing reconstructions which are themselves
combined with the talking heads. Almost all of the major players in the story
take part which is a little surprising as by the end hardly anyone comes out
with any sort of credibility.
I went into this film knowing the story having read about it
recently in a magazine. I knew very little about the film however and wasn’t
actually sure if it was a documentary or drama. The film plays its cards very
early and it isn’t exactly a spoiler, especially given the title, to tell you
that the person who returns home in 1997 is not Nicholas Barclay. The real
interest for the first half of the film at least, is how on earth this man
managed to convince Spanish officials, the American Embassy and most incredibly
the family of the missing boy that he was Nicholas. It’s almost too unreal to
be true. Without giving too much away, the man who claims to be the boy is of
French-Algerian descent and several years older than Barclay. He looks nothing
like the boy.
Based on the short story by Philip K. Dick which was the inspiration
for the 1990 film of the same name, Total
Recall takes place after a chemical war at the end of the twenty-first century.
Following the fallout, only two areas are left habitable on Earth; The United
Federation of Britain (UFB) and The Colony (the landmass of 
