RoboCop (1987) – In a dystopian future Detroit a city policeman is mortally wounded then brought back to life and duty when he’s transformed into a cyborg. RoboCop will have to battle criminals, the big money corporation that created him and his own lingering memories.
This all began when I caught the last 45 minutes or so of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 movie “RoboCop” on one of the movie channels and made some slighting remarks about it on my Facebook page. My cousin Stewart Smith (Entertainment Editor of the Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph and award winning journalist) challenged me to re-consider my assessment, believing that there was more there than I thought.
So I popped the movie into my Netflix queue (and was promptly greeted with the dreaded “Long Wait” flag) and waited. During my “time off” I’ve enjoyed being able to watch a movie with lunch a couple days a week. “RoboCop” filled that slot.
Let me step back for a moment. I believe there are four key aspects of a movie. Concept, Script/Dialogue, Cast/Acting, and Production/Visuals. Lots of movies get by with high scores in only three of those areas, a few get by with only two. So let’s see how “RoboCop” does.
Concept – This is the movies greatest strength. In some ways the concept was almost prescient, presenting us with Detroit in collapse and mega-corporations moving into more and more areas traditionally thought of a “public” (military, hospitals, prisons, police). Advances in technology allow a greater integration of humanity and technology (cyborgs). Out of that is created the icon that is RoboCop. A corporation steals his life, and attempts to eliminate both his personality and humanity. He is now a “product” rather than a person. The audience is faced with the classic challenge of the cyborg. Is it human? At what point does it cease to be so?
Call this a pass.
Script/Dialogue – Sadly, that great concept is utterly let down at this point. The script and the dialogue have the sophistication level of a 13 year old boy. The characters are one dimensional and show no growth during the movie. Laced with superfluous obscenity the dialogue is stilted and unnatural. Instead of giving us some intellecutal meat to chew on we get criminals who try to kick an armored robot police officer between the legs. With the expected results. RoboCop tosses a criminal through the door of a convenience store upright cooler and then offers up “Thank you for your cooperation”. Shakespeare this isn’t. The script is also borrows heavily from many other movies. You’ll get a taste of “Blade Runner” (which was a partial inspiration for the movie), you’ll get a clear Darth Vader reference. It just feels a lot like a script that was cobbled together from available pieces.
It also never really decides just how it’s going to approach the concept. Sometimes it’s a dark, dystopian movie. Then we get the knee to the groin joke. For a while I played with the idea that it was supposed to be satire or black comedy. Again the script never commits to either concept. I was left with the feeling that the writer felt like he needed to try and put some adult movie concepts in there somewhere. Again, a cobbled script lacking a true central vision.
Some critics have praised the script as offering a strong female lead in the person of RoboCop’s partner (from when he was just officer Murphy), Officer Ann Lewis. The idea is ludicrous. She is just another in a long line of incidental female roles who never manage to emerge from the shadow of her male lead. Early on as she beats up a manacled suspect in the station house. Tough lady, right? The first time she has to take on a suspect “in the wild” he takes her down with a move that shouldn’t work against a kindergartner, In the rest of the movie she’s there to provide compassion, and supply support. She does manage to blow up one bad guy at the end. Just another secondary female movie character for me. Too bad she wasn’t given more.
Call this a fail.
Cast/Acting – There’s some real veteran actors in this cast. Ronnie Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, Paul McClane. Peter Weller does a nice job in a role that severly limits his range of emotion. He carries the emptiness of RoboCop quite well but I’m not sold on his performance the way some critics have been. Roger Ebert, of sainted memory, credits Weller’s ability to elicit sympathy while covered in prosthetics. Given the plot I don’t think that required a lot of acting. Given that I find the script and dialogue so bad I’m not sure how much blame I can give to the cast. They do the best they can with decidedly inferior material.
Call this a push.
Production/Visuals – If you’re going to claim “Blade Runner” as your inspiration you’ve set the standard for the “look” of the movie very high. That isn’t entirely fair since the “Blade Runner” budget was $28,000,000 and “RoboCop” was working with only $13,000,000. I have no doubt the special effects chewed up a chunk of that. For the time they’re not bad. Not great but not bad. Once again there’s no commitment to a single vision for the movie. Visually the movie looks a lot like a well financed indie pic. The descriptions in the movie give you a vision of Detroit that speaks to Batman’s Gotham City. Curiously, the city you actually see is only minorly rundown.
The movie is also pretty bloody at times. Not as bloody as the original cut which received an “X” rating. It’s not quite Sam Peckinpaugh but clearly gets some inspiration there. Once again, even on the blood and guts/gross out theme the movie can’t figure out what it wants to be. The toxic slime “accident” late in the movie is much more teen horror than major motion picture.
There are some standout moments. RoboCop emerging from the fireball of an exploding gas station, the RoboCop itself. Even the ED-209 (the totally robotic police unit) isn’t awful. I will admit that every time I look at it all I see are studio microphones I’ve worked with during my radio career. But even the ED-209 can’t figure out what it is. When it falls down the stairs at one point it gets stuck on it’s back making pitiful small animal noises.
That lack of a consistent vision makes this a fail for me.
So one pass, one push and two fails. I can hardly get excited about “RoboCop”. Made by the same studio, this is basically just a low rent “Terminator” rip off. The difference is that the “Terminator” movies get all the pieces right.
At the same time the movie created some iconic images and moments for the wider movie world.
So we’ll give this movie a just barely “Worth A Look” rating.
Rating – *** Worth A Look
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