Review of RoboCop 2 (1990) by Allan C — 23 May 2014

Nowhere as good as the original, but nowhere as bad of a sequel as it was made out to be at the time. RoboCop is back and trying to get a dangerous new drug, Nuke, off the streets. What made the original so memorable was not the pulpy story about a half-man, half-robot police officer, but it was RoboCop's inner turmoil regarding wether he was humor or machine.

That an the anti-corporate satire. This film is too heavy handed in it's satire and RoboCop is really just an unstoppable Terminator in this film, reducing it to a simple comic book storyline that's not especially compelling.

The film needed a stronger director like Vehoven to give the film touches, like when The ED200 blasts a hole in RoboCop's visor to exposing his very human eye, revealing a level vulnerability in a critical moment that's never dealt with in an emotional way, but really only in a superficial manner.

Still, it's an entertaining enough of comic book story, plenty of terrific action and special effects and a very game cast that includes Peter Weller a RoboCop, Nancy Allen (with much better hair), John Glover and Tom Noonan.

Directed by Irvin "The Empire Strikes Back" Kershnera and co-written by Frank Miller (in his first screen credit) and Walon "The wild Bunch" Green, there's an able behind the scenes crew which makes it kind of disappointing how pedestrian the film ended up being.

I remember reading an interview with Green in an issue of American Film, saying how Miller's first draft of the film was filled with terrific ideas, but that he didn't have any idea how to structure a film and that's what Green was brought in to fix.

There are some clever bist that I bet were Miller's doing, like a little league team robbing an electronics store or drug addicted robots, but like I said before, it's not as bad as it was made out to be when it first came out, but it's still nowhere as good as the original.

Silliest of all, my favorite moment was when RoboCop goes into a video game arcade, because there are so many of those in the near future, right?