RoboCop

RoboCop (1987)

Runtime: 103 minutes

Directed by: Paul Verhoeven

Starring: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer

From: Orion

Somehow, I had never reviewed this anywhere. I can't explain it either, as I have seen this plenty of times in my life and it's pretty great. Nevertheless, my Letterboxd review is below:

I decided to start 2016 off right by seeing a film I have watched plenty of times in my life but the last viewing was awhile ago so it's just now that I can give this a proper review on Letterboxd. This is the unrated version, one that I remember back in the late 90's (when it was difficult to track down) was mythical; I distinctly remember a conversation with a few people at the lunch table at high school discussing how RoboCop was pretty awesome in its R-rated form and wondering how it'd be unrated if Saving Private Ryan was the way it was. Of course in hindsight the director of Ryan being who he is was a reason why it got that rating but point is, the movie was popular among people my age and I did enjoy the ultraviolence once I finally saw it in its full form.

I presume everyone is familiar with the plot of the “near-future” Detroit (sadly, Detroit 2016 is doing rather poorly) where the police force is now owned by a corporation and there's a feud over how to clear out a terrible area to build a “new area” so evil Dick Jones is not happy that the title character cyborg is popular and cleaning up the streets, so I won't spend a lot of time on that. What I appreciate is that this is more than just a silly tale where a robot deals with an A-hole corporate douche and an evil drug lord.

In hindsight, Paul Verhoeven directing this was a perfect fit, as it's a hard look at the excesses of the 1980's, with plenty of violence and dark humor and satire of the worst of the Reagan era and fear of its ramifications for the future; the corporate types are almost as villainous as the group that deals drugs and commits robbery. The occasional news broadcasts and commercials not only have some laughs but also are nice info dumps that advance the plot. Even the Benny Hill-esque character known as Bixby Snyder (“I'd buy that for a dollar!”) show what the climate is in the film's setting. Also, it does show the dangers of creating a cyborg from someone that died in a horrific way and privatizing law enforcement is probably a bad idea.

Besides being great entertainment all around that is nicely directed by Verhoeven, there are memorable characters all around, from the good guys to the bad guys, and those that are more shades of gray. Even though they are deplorable people you end up enjoying watching such people as Dick Jones, Clarence Boddicker, and their henchmen, from Emil and his gross demise and Joe's amazing laugh.

RoboCop just looks cool (so it's not a surprise that it became a franchise; I've never seen the remake but all I've heard makes me not want to see it, and I hear that it takes potshots at how the original design looked; what a fantastic way to make series fans happy), you like Alex Murphy and feel sorry for how he unwittingly became the title character, and the 80's special effects still work (ignoring an infamous few seconds of a character's death and how he had very long arms; ED-209 still looks believable) but what's below the surface is what makes this a great film and a perfect snapshot of how attitudes and beliefs were at the time.