Paul Verhoven, who originally turned this project down, must have known what a big joke this film was going to be if made right. But exactly right is how he's made it, as it's the kind of joke that one wants to get told by someone who knows how to tell it, so that one can remember how it goes to tell the next guy. It lays in its satire in sharp stabs that are wickedly dead-on, as far as consumerism and living in a state of decay by the media and complete omniscient (and sinister in playing both sides) corporate control goes, with commercials for 'Nukem', a variation on battleship, and a dinosaur-attacking-a-city movie coming soon, which comes at the strangest of time in the story. In fact, RoboCop in a big way can be seen as the older cousin of Starship Troopers, and to a smaller extent Total Recall, Verhoven's other futuristic sci-fi ventures: the society itself, which is encompassed with authorities, the corporate interests, the criminals, the cops with their low morale and high body count (cops deaths, not criminals), lends itself to being led on to get dominated by technology. What RoboCop brilliantly posits is that when the human element is suppressed in a society driven head-on by mindless and lethal technology, it's bound to come out somehow in some form. Just so happens Murphy (Peter Weller) is that form.
The simple lowdown: Murphy and his female cop partner are out chasing some bad guys, they track them down to a warehouse where Murphy is captured, shot repeatedly (his hand gets shot off first, then past the bullet proof vest), and killed...Or so it seems, as he's not totally dead, and is brought back to life, though not really. In a series of first-person perspectives- a real inventive way to show passage of time as well as a level of cynical manipulation in the guise of wild progress in making a human-robot- we see Murphy turned into Robocop, his arms replaced, a gridding and shooting system loaded in, and finally taking his first steps. Like any superhero, RoboCop is a kick-ass force to be reckoned with, and completely objective: he's there to serve and protect, and make the occasional PA for kids, "Stay out of trouble." The same thugs from before however are still lurking around, and a run-in with one stirs memories, if not exactly feelings, of Murphy's demise, as well as the loss he feels for his wife and child. Little by little, a routine investigation/crackdown by Robocop turns into a sort of vendetta. This, unfortunately, stirs up wrath in the head of the OCP, who is, as luck would have it, also the boss of the big-hoodlums Robocop is after in Detroit's glummest of slums.
It's worth to point out some of these story points, as Verhoven and the writers are actually very strong on pushing forward the story, but in a level that makes material that should be in a 25 cent pulpy comic book from the 50s into something more tangible. Like the Terminator, Verhoven keeps the adrenaline going forward as far as directing the action set-pieces, from small scenes with liquor store robberies, to a big crackdown of Clarence's drug operation, and to a scene involving many, many, many guns firing on Robocop in one fell swoop. But there's often an attitude to action, specifically the "excessive violence" (as the MPAA put it when it gave the film an X at first sight), that reminds the audience that it's bigger than life, like a movie should be like this, and at the same time graphic enough to point out the very chaotic nature of gang warfare. It's a thin line that Verhoven and his collaborators walk on and pull off tremendously, in making scenes that should be horribly horrific, like when the big walker-gun-machine is introduced and kills one of the board members, hilarious in the darkest possible way in how they unfold, and at the same time keep excitement to it, of the kind of danger one saw in Death Wish (and, like that film, Detroit's crime scene is probably not far from the one depicted here).
And when it comes down to it too, RoboCop/Murphy is the kind of big-screen hero that audiences can get behind, if after a slight adjustment to the whole goof that comes in just picturing a Robocop before it comes on screen. There's tragedy inherent to Murphy's original demise, hence the sort of bitter edge of the first-person creation scenes, especially because Robocop's creators didn't work out making it a figure that is entirely robot. Programming stays the same, but the past ends up informing the character, and brings what is otherwise a walking bill-of-rights machine with a big (bleeping) gun to being human again, in its black-and-white manner. In his own kind of twisted way, this is for Verhoven what Brazil is for Terry Gilliam; a near-future plausible not for the advances in technology (or lack thereof), but because of human beings not being able to know how to function society, and what a consciousness in technology brings to the situation. This as well as each director's obsessions, in this case Verhoven's knack at shameless artifice, bigger than life bad guys, twists in the plot, and a lot of bombastic violence. And all the same, it's an rip-roaring adult popcorn movie, one of the best of 1987.
The simple lowdown: Murphy and his female cop partner are out chasing some bad guys, they track them down to a warehouse where Murphy is captured, shot repeatedly (his hand gets shot off first, then past the bullet proof vest), and killed...Or so it seems, as he's not totally dead, and is brought back to life, though not really. In a series of first-person perspectives- a real inventive way to show passage of time as well as a level of cynical manipulation in the guise of wild progress in making a human-robot- we see Murphy turned into Robocop, his arms replaced, a gridding and shooting system loaded in, and finally taking his first steps. Like any superhero, RoboCop is a kick-ass force to be reckoned with, and completely objective: he's there to serve and protect, and make the occasional PA for kids, "Stay out of trouble." The same thugs from before however are still lurking around, and a run-in with one stirs memories, if not exactly feelings, of Murphy's demise, as well as the loss he feels for his wife and child. Little by little, a routine investigation/crackdown by Robocop turns into a sort of vendetta. This, unfortunately, stirs up wrath in the head of the OCP, who is, as luck would have it, also the boss of the big-hoodlums Robocop is after in Detroit's glummest of slums.
It's worth to point out some of these story points, as Verhoven and the writers are actually very strong on pushing forward the story, but in a level that makes material that should be in a 25 cent pulpy comic book from the 50s into something more tangible. Like the Terminator, Verhoven keeps the adrenaline going forward as far as directing the action set-pieces, from small scenes with liquor store robberies, to a big crackdown of Clarence's drug operation, and to a scene involving many, many, many guns firing on Robocop in one fell swoop. But there's often an attitude to action, specifically the "excessive violence" (as the MPAA put it when it gave the film an X at first sight), that reminds the audience that it's bigger than life, like a movie should be like this, and at the same time graphic enough to point out the very chaotic nature of gang warfare. It's a thin line that Verhoven and his collaborators walk on and pull off tremendously, in making scenes that should be horribly horrific, like when the big walker-gun-machine is introduced and kills one of the board members, hilarious in the darkest possible way in how they unfold, and at the same time keep excitement to it, of the kind of danger one saw in Death Wish (and, like that film, Detroit's crime scene is probably not far from the one depicted here).
And when it comes down to it too, RoboCop/Murphy is the kind of big-screen hero that audiences can get behind, if after a slight adjustment to the whole goof that comes in just picturing a Robocop before it comes on screen. There's tragedy inherent to Murphy's original demise, hence the sort of bitter edge of the first-person creation scenes, especially because Robocop's creators didn't work out making it a figure that is entirely robot. Programming stays the same, but the past ends up informing the character, and brings what is otherwise a walking bill-of-rights machine with a big (bleeping) gun to being human again, in its black-and-white manner. In his own kind of twisted way, this is for Verhoven what Brazil is for Terry Gilliam; a near-future plausible not for the advances in technology (or lack thereof), but because of human beings not being able to know how to function society, and what a consciousness in technology brings to the situation. This as well as each director's obsessions, in this case Verhoven's knack at shameless artifice, bigger than life bad guys, twists in the plot, and a lot of bombastic violence. And all the same, it's an rip-roaring adult popcorn movie, one of the best of 1987.