Review 192: RoboCop

RoboCop is an amazing sci-fi film and one of Paul Verhoeven best films and one of the best science fiction movies ever made.

Detroit - in the future - is crime-ridden, and run by a massive company, Omni Consumer Products (OCP). After OCP announces that it bought out the Detroit police department, the department decides to go on strike. Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) gets transferred from Metro South to the West. He and his partner, Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), track down a group of criminals led by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith). Unfortunately, Murphy was killed by Clarence's gang. Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), one of OCP's employees, transforms Murphy's corpse into Robocop, to compete with another employee, senior president of OCP, Dick Jones' (Ronny Cox) ED-209. Robocop's tests are successful. Unfortunately, Robocop rediscovers his memories (when he was Alex Murphy), and now knows he has to find and arrest Clarence Boddicker. He realizes that Clarence is working for Bob Morton's competition Dick Jones. Now, Robocop must stop both Clarence and Dick Jones.

The plot is a work of sheer genius. As well as being a thrilling and violent action blockbuster, RoboCop is a surprisingly deeply philosophical films that boldly dare to explore such themes as media influence, resurrection, gentrification, corruption, greed, privatization, capitalism, identity, and human nature.

It strikes that near-perfect balance between being a fun thrilling action blockbuster and a surpringly intelligent satire with some genuine emotional heft.

 

Ressurection: RoboCop is fundementaly a story of rebirth; Paul Verhoeven describes the premise as a religious metaphor: If Jesus Christ was to come back in the 20th Century he'd have a gun. Sounds rather awesome. Verhoeven further elaborate that thif film is about "the industructability of the human soul." Alex Murphy, even when he's killed and ressurected as "RoboCop" has an incorruptible sense of identity that no dehumanised society can destroy.

Identity: When Murphy comes back to life, he has no recalls of his previous life, he loses his identity.
Murphy's struggles in reasserting his humanity also deals with this theme. The story introduces a concept that there would be such a potential for psychological disruption. Even if you had supposedly wiped someone's memories and emotions they'd still might have some kind of residual humanity where if they'd looked at themselves as a complete robot with no relation to their past organic form, they'd completely freak out and have a psychotic breakdown. So the idea was that surgeons had literally skinned off Alex Murphy's face and then placed it on the cyborg. So it's not like they transplanted his head, they just took his face off and laid it on the cyborg, and that was to give him his own little sense of identity

Genrification: Detroit is on the verge of collapse due to financial ruin and unchecked crime and OCP plans to destroy "Old Detroit" and replace it with the utopia of "Delta City".
Coruption: Dick Jones will do anything to eliminate any competition with him and his project: to build ED-209 even if it means murder.

Privatization: Omni Consumer Products (OCP) buys out the Detroit Police Department, privatised it and now they intend to bring a new form of Law and Order to society. They then decide that robotic law enforcement is the best way forward in making Detroit a high-end utopia.

 

Corruption and Greed:  The core of this film is how OCP have this cop who they insit "I own you" yet he still does the right thing.  There are many news breaks throughout the film where television hosts who smile brightly at the camera while reporting on horrific violence and brand new products.

Capitalism: Jones wants the police to buy out his ED-209 whilest Morton wants RoboCop to be used and this leads to a rivalry.

 

Humanity and Idenitity: 

Masculinity and Authority: When he becomes RoboCop, Murphy gains all these superhuman abilities but at the cost of his human identity. His son always insists, before the transformation, that his human father perform the gun spinning trick he sees on TV. When the robot can finally do this properly, he is no longer just a male biological body: he is a body plus machinery, a body which includes within it the symbolic circuitry of science. The story introduces a more tragic note the hero who finds himself literally "between two deaths"—clinically dead and at the same time provided with a new, mechanical body—starts to remember fragments of his previous, "human" life and thus undergoes a process of resubjectivication, changing gradually back from pure incarnated drive to a being of desire. (...) [I]f there is a phenomenon that fully deserves to be called the "fundamental fantasy of contemporary mass culture," it is this fantasy of the return of the living dead: the fantasy of a person who does not want to stay dead but returns again and again to pose a threat to the living. All these themes add up to say a lot about our world. It is also quite fun.

Paul Verhoeven direction is stylish and precise, finding a strong balance between depicting Murphy's struggles as RoboCop, the fun moments of the film

the cinematography is , the production design is fantastic; RoboCop's portrayal of Detroit is a nighrmarish, post-industrial, run-down dystopia overrun by gangs, social decay and corporate corruption. The low-tech, gritty environments lends the film some strong flavour and feels very distinctive almost like a Prequel of sorts to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

the costume design is majestic (the RoboCop suit looks amazing,

The score by Basil Poledouris is spectacular (an amazing blend of industrial percussion and synthesizers to signify RoboCop and more traditional orchestral themes to signify his human side to create a 

the special effects are awsome, the make up is rich, the stunt work is impressive, there are some great scenes of suspense, the props are brilliant, it's well paced, the action scenes are thrilling, exciting and well choreographed, the sound effects are superb, the violence is brutal and the ending was superb. I also think the film does an excellent job conveying a depiction of a city in chaos (there's this scene were Clarence's crooks are wrecking a street which looked very realistic to me).

The acting is excellent, but Peter Weller steals the show as the title character. 

Nancy Allen is brilliant playing Lewis, Murphy's partner

Robert DoQui is excellent as Sgt. Warren Reed,

 
Dan O'Herlihy is fabulous as the OCP Chairman

Miguel Ferrer is great as OCP Executive Robert "Bob" Morton

Ronny Cox and Kurtwood Smith are fantastic villians.

RoboCop is one of the most groundbreaking films of all time and I'm interested in review the remake when it comes out, 5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.