Robocop

Movie Name: Robocop
Year of Release: 1987
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, Ronny Cox, Ray Wise, Robert DoQui, Felton Perry, Paul McCrane, Jesse D. Goins, Dan O'Herlihy, Del Zamora
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 7
Watch it on Amazon

Synopsis and Review

Few films have managed to become imminently associated with a particular decade, but the 1980s has quite a few of them, including Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones" series, Joe Dante's "Gremlins", Robert Zemeckis' "Back to the Future", Ivan Reitman's "Ghostbusters", James Cameron's "Aliens", Tim Burton's "Batman", James Ivory's Merchant Ivory adaptation "A Rom with a View", and the list goes on, but one that is unmissable from that list is Paul Verhoeven's "Robocop". Mr. Verhoeven who at the time had just directed "Flesh + Bood", sped up his career into bigger projects thanks to the success of "Robocop", which originated not quite as interesting sequels, animated shows, and the list goes on. The film follows the story of Alex Murphy, an honest police officer with a wife and a kid, living in Detroit, a city that is at the brink of social and financial collapse. The city has set up an arrangement with a private corporation, Omni Consumer Products, to control and assist the Detroit Police Department that is struggling with salaries (and retention of their police officers), and the non stop crime and violence in the city. Omni wants to add more technology to the Police Department, including a concept for a Robocop. The prototypes are not faring quite so well. Murphy and his partner Anne Lewis, are pursuing criminals, in particular Clarence Boddicker, a violent and sadistic individual who leads a gang, and they have their hands involved in everything. Murphy and Lewis manage to locate Boddicker's gang, but they're separated, and Murphy gets violently killed by the gang. Murphy's remains are assigned to the Robocop project, and he is revitalized as a human/cyborg hybrid. He is brought back to Metro West, and while everyone believes his memories of his former self have been erased, he still remains with traits of his Murphy personality, something that Anne Lewis starts noticing. Another thing everyone starts noticing, is how Robocop wastes no time, and stars battling crime with no ambiguity or fear. That is until he uncovers wrongdoing coming from Omni itself.

"Robocop" features something that has become a stalwart of Mr. Verhoeven's films, particularly the futuristic ones: he embeds his films with social-economical view points which illustrate societal unbalances, political allegories on fascism, how crime prevails across a putrid system that thrives on abusing those with few resources while those in positions of power thrive. "Robocop" which could at first glance go in the direction of a reductive comic book type of approach, meaning formulaic and revenge driven, opts instead to bring questions such as the relationship between humans and technology, ambition walking hand in hand with crime, society collapsing due to greedy corporations, all of these topics wrapped up in what is, in a lot of ways, a modernized western with a lone ranger at its core. Mr. Verhoeven manages to create an entertaining and also very palatable allegory, one that illustrates where societies can in fact go when economic power tilts the direction of government, when crime goes unchecked, particularly as it climbs the economic and political ladder, and how frail and expendable human lives can be in these types of situations. Essentially, how human lives become pawns in a game that is solely focused on money and power, and where human lives register very poorly. It's a film where the director knows he has to entertain and bring an aspect of action and excitement to what is happening, but he does so with a very well positioned critical view of society, peppering the narrative with his particular heightened taste in violence and gore, which once again illustrates just how brutal life and individuals can be. The characters could benefit from extra development, particularly Nancy Allen's Anne Lewis and Ronny Cox's Jones, but the film still manages to pack a powerful punch. The cast is uniformly great, with Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Miguel Ferrer, Robert DoQui, Kurtwood Smith, and Dan O'Herlihy, creating strong and memorable performances. The production team is equally top notch, including Jost Vacano's cinematography, Basil Poledouris' score, and William Sandell's production design. It's a classic that hasn't lost any of its power or relevance. Worth watching.