Review of RoboCop (1987) by Tim S — 18 Jul 2015

Long before Joss Whedon came along and decided that characters and situations in a sci-fi action movie or TV series should be on the satirical side (that is, before it became somewhat the "norm"), Paul Verhoeven managed to squeeze into the proceedings with his masterpiece Robocop.

It's a movie that's a commentary on the 1980's, the future, and the genres themselves, while also delivering a top-notch entry as well. Highly imitated for years, and even remade into a mediocre carbon copy, Robocop still stands tall as a silly idea that turned out far better than its title suggested.

These days Paul Verhoeven is more or less laughed at because of his involvement with Showgirls, but there was a time when he was considered a terrific visualist with a penchant for over-the-top violence.

Between Robocop and Total Recall (as well as Starship Troopers much later), he more or less nailed the science fiction/action extravaganza over the head, while at the same time putting his own personal and very deliberate stamp on the films he directed.

Robocop was his first swing for the fences, and while it might seem a little crude technically at times, there's no denying the amount of power that it sustains. If you somehow missed this one, here's the rundown: the Detroit of the future is portrayed as a complete cesspool, one that a development company, OCP, wants to build on top of to make a more stable society.

Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to combat the crime in the streets before investing time, money, and manpower on the endeavor. At the same time, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is new in town, a tough cop with a strong moral barometer.

After he is gunned down by a group of vicious thugs lead by Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), he is brought back to life by scientists at OCP. Reborn as Robocop, a virtually unstoppable cybernetic police officer, he takes to the streets to clean them up, along the way discovering a bit of his humanity.

Unfortunately, not all is well at OCP. A competing executive in the company (Ronny Cox) wants his robot prototype to be the one to succeed, and he will stop at nothing in order to make that happen. To cut things short without too many spoilers, things go bad, shit blows up, and people die.

Rounding out the terrific main cast is Nancy Allen, Ray Wise, Miguel Ferrer, and Dan O'Herlihy. It was a movie that was apparently hell to make due to the working conditions and obsessive nature of the director, but it ended up being a near-perfect movie that was cloned to death throughout the late 1980's and early 1990's.

Two sequels were made, but none could hold a candle to the quality and simplicity of the original. It even requires little to no backstory in order to analyze Murphy's (Robocop's) humanity, which is a good thing.

Besides being endlessly quotable, it's also one of the most engaging action movies of the era. It holds up enormously well, and became very much prophesy about the decades to come.