RoboCop
“Dead or alive, you are coming with me!” – RoboCop
Director Paul Verhoeven didn’t have much success creating films at the beginning of his career (except the short series “Floris” with Rutger Hauer). And then 1987 happened, significant for many reasons. 😁
And among those significant events was also his film “RoboCop,” which made a small film revolution, and paved Verhoeven’s path to making many cult films during the 90s (“Total Recall,” “Basic Instinct,” “Showgirls,” “Starship Troopers,” “Hollow Man”).
The plot of the film “RoboCop” is, at first glance, quite straightforward.
In the near dystopian future (somewhere between 2040 and 2050), the city of Detroit is on the edge of system collapse… literally. Crime everywhere, (financial) resources nonexistent… as a desperate move, the city hands over to corporation “OCP” (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder… I know, stupid joke, it’s actually “Omni Consumer Products”) control over Detroit’s police department to help them. “OCP” has a plan to demolish all of Detroit and build a futuristic mega city, but first they must deal with crime. Originally one of the senior directors (Dick Jones) demonstrated to the board of directors project “ED-209,” a brutal and terrifying robot/droid in police service that would secure the city… but the demonstration went unsuccessfully… and very bloodily. Like in any business world, this is ideal opportunity to stick a knife in the back before the presiding officer and mow down your superior/rival with a slide, so one of the ambitious junior executive types (Bob Morton), proposes implementation of his project “RoboCop” – a cyborg combining the best of a policeman’s skills and a robot.
Meanwhile, policeman Alex Murphy is transferred to Detroit police department where he gets as partner tough and charming Anne Lewis, and soon by coincidence they encounter a serious task: now they’re in pursuit of notorious criminal Clarence Boddicker and his gang (well, maybe it’s too much to say gang because there are five of them total… but they’re very dangerous and everyone fears them in Detroit) and manage to corner them in an abandoned building. However, the gang manages to surround Alex and brutally physically torture him with firearms (yes, it sounds as nasty as you read it), until at one moment they riddle him including an “over” in the head. And Anne arrives too late to help.
Bob Morton takes Alex’s body and turns him into android – RoboCop. RoboCop has no (Alex’s) memories of past life, is heavily armored (and even more heavily armed with quite a nasty automatic pistol… pardon me, little pistol) and has only three directives: serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law. There’s also a fourth directive, but even for RoboCop it’s marked as classified.
RoboCop starts zealously enforcing the law and becomes terror for criminals. And meanwhile, Anne suspects that behind the machine’s armor is precisely her police partner, Alex Murphy, because of one unusual gesture RoboCop (apparently unconsciously) makes. Interestingly during one maintenance, RoboCop starts dreaming (which for scientists was, expectedly, impossible to happen) and apparently starts remembering his death and that he apparently had some identity.
And meanwhile, RoboCop’s success and Bob Morton’s showing off with his successful project will lead to (bloody) chaos in “OCP” because individuals have their own plans for the planned futuristic version of Detroit, which includes crime… and which includes removing RoboCop to the scrap heap… and on top of all that chaos, Detroit police go on strike because of insufficient number of police officers and very low salaries.
Whether RoboCop will eradicate Detroit’s crime, what the hidden fourth directive is, and whether he’ll perhaps remember some more details from his (human) past, you’ll find out in this 1987 classic – “RoboCop”! 😁
Director Verhoeven (and screenwriter Edward Neumeier) found inspiration for the film in “Star Wars” titles and the film “Blade Runner” only set in nearer future. He had the idea for the film to be very dark, brutal and bloody, often to comic limits. And speaking of comedy, although this film is officially “science fiction action film,” it contains elements classic for police films (cop shows), but also black humor (especially through individual cheesy phrases or commercials appearing during news).
Inspiration for the cyborg RoboCop himself, the film’s creator found in the C3PO robot from “Star Wars” films, but also in some much older titles (like “Metropolis” from 1927 and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” from 1951), to later find inspiration in elegant designs of a Japanese illustrator (who worked on the AIBO robot-dog project). And for bulky droid ED-209, although a huge 2m and 200kg mockup was made, for filming two miniatures with stop-motion technique were used.
Visually, the film was pretty cool for that time. Focused on quasi-futuristic elements, dark colors (especially matte color is everywhere in the film), simplicity and elegance in vehicle and robot design, in combination with good music (in which serious money was also invested for that time), made a really good combo for the audience to enjoy. Special praise for special effects the film gets when actor Paul McCrane (who played one of Clarence’s gang members, Emil) wore various prosthetic additions, to simulate his grotesque appearance when he emerged from the acid, during the showdown with RoboCop.
Action is also good, where primary focus is on RoboCop’s showdowns with criminals, primarily with firearms (and occasionally metal fist)… although these showdowns are as equal as if you gave a hunter a shotgun to shoot thirty rabbits crammed in a corner from half a meter distance. But there are also some car chases, shooting, explosions… standard stuff.
As for acting, the star is, of course, Peter Weller as Alex Murphy/RoboCop, the role that brought him considerable fame (by the way, he attracted the filmmakers’ attention with the lead role in the film “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,” and he also appeared in the newer “Star Trek” film, series “Sons of Anarchy,” lent his voice to aged Batman in “The Dark Knight Returns”). In principle, for that time, he really nicely played the robot/cyborg role, complete with movement, minimal facial expressions, as well as reactions when his human side starts to “activate”.
We’ll also mention villains who had solid screen time here, primarily thinking of excellent Kurtwood Smith (Red Forman from cult series “That ’70s Show,” “Star Trek VI,” “Broken Arrow,” “Rambo III”) as semi-psychopathic Clarence Boddicker, Ronny Cox (“Total Recall,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Deliverance”) who played greedy senior director Dick Jones (interestingly this role turned out really good, because the actor until then always played good guys in films, so this turn turned out interesting both for him and the audience), Paul McCrane (Dr. Romano from hospital series “ER”) as crazy criminal Emil, Ray Wise (does anyone remember series “Twin Peaks”?) as criminal Leon… and let’s also mention late Miguel Ferrer (“Twin Peaks,” “Crossing Jordan”) as ambitious creator of RoboCop project Bob Morton and Nancy Allen as tough-girl cop with big heart, Anne Lewis.
The film “RoboCop” addressed (though superficially, so it’s more left to our imagination) quite a few interesting motifs. First is greed and corruption and exploitation of state institutions for enrichment of certain companies and their people (hm, why does this sound familiar to me?), and of course, the corporate world in the style of “The Wolf of Wall Street just without the stock market.” There’s, of course, favoring the rich at the expense of poorer classes. In a way, the film is also a critique of Reagan’s state leadership.
Perhaps the most important leitmotif of the series is the question of humanity and technological progress. Alex Murphy becomes a cyborg… but he was dead before that. First his humanity and dignity were taken by criminals through humiliation and mistreatment, which culminated in brutal death. He is, in a way, resurrected by technology, but he doesn’t experience himself as Alex Murphy even when some memories return. He’s aware he was Alex Murphy, who was killed, now he’s RoboCop, and these are “some” Alex Murphy’s memories. You know, interestingly here that concept turned out – on one hand he is both personalities, but on the other hand he is, in the end, just RoboCop. What future awaits us, if humanity decides to merge with machine (irrelevant whether as dead or alive) – do we become (hybrid) humans with machine elements or do we become machines that were once human? Uh, this went into heavy philosophy, let’s leave that for Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek, my head hurt from this deep thought…
All in all, “RoboCop” was and remained one of the best films of the 80s, but also one of the better sci-fi and action films of all time (which you’ll surely find highly ranked on various ranking lists in these two categories). This title spawned two more sequels, a live-action (and animated) series, video games, comics, toys and what have you… including a remake of the film from 2014.
It would be a shame not to watch it, I guarantee your time will fly quickly with this film.
And you, dear reader, have you had the opportunity to watch this film sometime? 🙂
Trailer
IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic | Criticker | Roger Ebert
Release date: 1987
Format: Film
Runtime: 102 minutes
