Review of RoboCop 3 (1993) by Darik H — 13 Mar 2011

You know, I think I have to have already seen this movie two, maybe three times, yet every time I try to think back to it, all I draw is a big blank. Say what you will about RoboCop 2, but at least it's memorable; RoboCop 3 is so boring and stock, every time I see it the memory just leaks back out of my head twenty minutes later. And that's really, really impressive considering how insultingly simplistic and utterly ridiculous this movie is. Working yet again from a script by Frank Miller (didn't they learn their lesson the first time around?), RoboCop 3 drops all pretense of subtle satire and dives headlong into broad moralizing, literally transforming OCP into a bunch of cruel, inept Bond villains (complete with a burnished metal, fortress-like boardroom) and their soldiers into S.S. stormtroopers. At the same time, the resistance characters are treated as totally innocent victims, despite the fact that they use explosives, machine guns, and terrorist tactics to combat OCP's takeover. And then, of course, there's the fact that the movie completely ignores the world outside Detroit, as if the federal government wouldn't have a few things to say about murdered cops and human rights violations committed by private industry on U.S. soil (I know it's supposed to be a cynical future, but I just can't see the bleeding-heart Democrats being okay with pseudo-Nazis hauling men, women, and children off to "rehabilitation camps" because they want to put a shopping mall where an apartment building was). Are the filmmakers trying to say that we're just a few campaign contributions away from a fascist state? By taking the social message of the franchise several steps too far, RoboCop 3 pretty much throws away all of the credibility garnered by the first two films (well, mostly the first one) to become a big, stupid, morally clean-cut piece of junk. And hey, it's PG-13 now! Because kids love RoboCop, and therefore RoboCop should be made for kids. Sounds good to me!

Even though the film's main plot is abysmally simple, there are a lot of things going on in this sequel; you could tell that they were trying for a movie that would complete the RoboCop trilogy, as it were, by wrapping every plot thread and ambiguity in the franchise up in a nice, big bow. The movie starts with yet another expository newscast, telling us that Delta City is finally moving forward and that the citizens of Detroit are being assisted out of their homes by Urban Rehabilitators ("Rehabs" for short), OCP troops who are only there to make the transition smoother. Cut to wrecking balls smashing into childrens' bedrooms and shock troops herding poor people onto buses, and within moments the film starts to reek of political commentary pushed too far. Turns out OCP is falling into ruin and has been bought out by a Japanese corporation, and if they don't clear out Detroit in four days, they lose the right to build Delta City, which will inevitably cause the company to implode- understandably, they're in a hurry to get started. Enter RoboCop, who's suddenly stricken by a crisis of conscience from being on the wrong side of an obvious Holocaust metaphor, and after some soul searching (and the unceremonious murder of his partner Lewis, which I'll get to later), Murphy joins the plucky rebel forces, which consist of a bunch of incompetent civilians and, of course, a precocious little girl who can seemingly reprogram anything with her little kids' laptop. 'Course, they don't realize that RoboCop is being hunted by a sophisticated samurai robot sent by the Kanemitsu Corporation, nor that one of their own is a mole for the Rehabs; long story short, the rebels get pwned, the cops switch sides, RoboCop gets a jetpack, and OCP gets blowed up real good. Oh, and there's a street gang running around called the "Splatterpunks" who sound exactly like the Mutants from Miller's comic book masterpiece, The Dark Knight Returns. Way to be original, Frank.

This is the first RoboCop movie to feature someone other than Peter Weller in the big metal suit, and you'd be hard pressed to find a worse candidate for the job that Robert John Burke. While his face may, uh, kinda resemble Weller's if you squint really, really hard, the timber and pitch of his voice is just laughably incongruous with the character, sounding more like an electronic surfer dude than a robot cop. And if you're thinking of arguing that his acting talents could have won him the role, well, you obviously haven't seen him play the part. His movements are far less precise than Weller's, and he lacks the subtlety to emote through his robotic performance- but the deal-breaker for me has to be his hands, which he constantly keeps waist-high, palms-down, and parallel to the ground whenever he's walking... giving the impression that he's creeping or, worse, prancing throughout the streets of Detroit. Thankfully, the new Robo has some experienced back-up, in the form of Nancy Allen's Officer Lewis! Allen is like a breath of fresh air, a reminder that yes, this is still a RoboCop movie, and that at least some things never change... until they blow her away to give RoboCop a cheap motivation to go after the bad guys (again, more on that later). But Robert DoQui is here, too, as the gruff Sergeant Reed, who actually does something active this time around... well, at least, he tries to, until RoboCop has to fly in and saves his ass (oh, did I mention that Robo has a jet-pack in this movie? It's one of the few cool things this film has to offer, and it lasts about one cumulative minute of screen time). Then... (sigh)... there's everybody else. For some reason, Dan O'Herlihy's Old Man is gone (eliminated in a single line of throwaway dialogue), only to be replaced by the scenery-chewing campiness of Rip Torn as Merritt W. Morton, CEO of OCP (any relation to Bob Morton, the guy who had RoboCop built? Who knows? I'm sure even the writers don't). He's in cahoots with McDaggett, the leader of the Gestapo- uh, I mean the Rehabs- who is played with mustache-twirling obtuseness by John Castle. Then there's Otomo, the leaner, more efficient Japanese robot (sort of like a ninja Terminator) played by Bruce Locke. I like the concept of the character (the Japanese outdoing us in the field of electronics? Unheard of!), and the jab at the zeitgeist that he and the Kanemitsu Corporation represent, but he's just pretty much superfluous to the plot... not to mention stupid, wielding nothing but a samurai sword in a world full of semi-automatics. Oh, and for some reason, it smokes. Uh... why? Lastly, I have to bring up the rebel forces, which are absolutely pathetic, all things told. Sure, I get that they're supposed to be average people fighting for their homes and families, but come on- Stephen Root is a rebel fighter? The guy who played Milton in Office Space is now a gun-toting guerrilla? What were the casting people smoking when the came up with this? And why do these people bother setting up a post-Apocalyptic community on the edge of town when they could just, oh, I don't know, MOVE AWAY? Just buy a friggin' bus ticket and go to Columbus, Ohio, or some other place where greedy multinational corporations AREN'T trying to put you into concentration camps!

As bad a move as it was getting Irvin Kershner to direct the second film, this movie manages to top it by tapping Fred Dekker, known for such films as Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad, to close out the trilogy. This guy doesn't have Verhoven's quirky sensibilities or Kershner's slick visual sense; no, Dekker is clearly a student of the low-budget school of filmmaking, which results in a RoboCop film that is now entirely in B-movie territory. The film lacks the distinctive visual style of the first two, trading in the Orwellian, dystopic near-future for either pure sci-fi (the OCP sets and Robo's command center look like something out of Star Trek) or the unvarnished present-day- and there's a disconnect between the two, as if when the scene changes, you're suddenly watching a different movie. Probably the most obnoxious thing the director does, though, is a quick dolly from a medium shot into an extreme, low-angle close-up to punctuate a dramatic beat- it's unbearably cheesy, and the guy must do it something like seven or eight times! As bad as the direction is, though, it's made all the worse from being built upon the screenplay by Frank Miller and, wouldn't you know it, Fred Dekker. Since they were going for a PG-13 rating to begin with, the violence and the dark comedy have been seriously toned down, robbing the story of much of its bite. That being said, there are actually moments of good satire present here (the executive jumping out the window, for one, or an eerily prescient moment when Reed, going over mug shots of resistance fighters, says "Do not let the fact that these people are homeless sway you. They're terrorists!"), but they're largely drowned out by a radically oversimplified conflict, and LOADS of corporate-Nazi imagery (they even have a badge on their shoulders that's clearly a jagged three-pronged swastika!). That was always Frank Miller's problem: the guy has no grasp of subtlety. He's like the Michael Moore of comic book writers- fiercely liberal, staunchly anti-capitalist, and obnoxiously outspoken about it, to the extent that he pisses off even those who agree with him. Unlike Miller's normal, hyper-violent output, however, this script plays out like an episode of a Saturday morning cartoon, in which, even when people are being killed right in front of you, there's never a feeling of danger or peril; I'm fairly certain we can thank the hackwork of Fred Dekker for that. And don't even get me started on the inconsistencies... the most glaring being: why does RoboCop even still have a Directive Four, when he erased ALL of his directives in the last film? The special effects are pretty lame for the early nineties (another film about a cyborg set the standard in that department), and the action sequences are anemic (get it? 'Cause they're bloodless! ... Nevermind). Also, for a film set in an urban war zone, the cinematography by Gary B. Kibbe is way too clean, the color palette far too vibrant. Production-wise, the only thing this movie does right is bring Basil Poledouris back into the franchise, reinstating his classic theme; unfortunately, even that is not enough to inject life into this lumbering, forgettable disappointment.

This film can probably best be summed up by a single scene: the death of Officer Anne Lewis. This is easily one of the most monumental missed opportunities in a movie I've ever witnessed. After being shot by the bad guys, Murphy carries Lewis into a church for cover, laying her melodramatically at the foot of the altar. She says "I'm scared," and he replies, "Don't be. It won't hurt for long." But instead of continuing along this thread, with Anne maybe asking Murphy what it's like to die and getting into some really awesome character development or philosophy, she just asks him to "get them for me," reducing the death of one of the principle characters of this franchise to little more than a tacked-on motivation to go after the bad guys. Robo then completes the failure by whispering "officer down" and bowing his head in a way that honestly made me laugh out loud. What really sucks, though, is that the scene was a good idea- it takes the story of Lewis to its logical conclusion (she's his last tether to humanity- she had to bite it sooner or later)- but it's marred by shoddy execution and an unwillingness to put any real thought into the material. Ultimately, rather than being a pivotal tragic moment in the character's story, the scene is just a springboard from which to launch redundant action set pieces and pointless explosions later in the film. That's RoboCop 3 in a nutshell: it's a dull, forgettable, unintentionally funny dumbing-down of the character and the story that has some good ideas behind it, but just can't seem to pull any of them off very well. And maybe now that I've written all this down, I'll actually remember how bad this film is before I accidentally end up sitting through it all over again.