RoboCop (1987)

When I was a kid, I loved going in the local mom-and-pop video store. You'd find me in there at some point every Friday or Saturday night, and most of the time I'd be either in the horror section or going through whatever old-school pro wrestling videos they had in stock at the time. But because those two collections were in the back of the store, it gave me plenty of opportunities to see what else was available as I passed by them. And this allowed a number of movies to catch my eye, movies that I would fall in love with over the course of numerous repeat viewings.

One of those movies was the action/sci-fi classic RoboCop. The cover of the VHS tape and the movie's tagline ― "Part Man, Part Machine, All Cop: The Future of Law Enforcement" ― were themselves enough to sell me on it, and between the video store's copy, airings of the movie on television, and my own copy of the movie that I got on one particular birthday, I must have seen the movie dozens of times during my adolescent years. RoboCop is one of those movies that very much deserves its accolades and popularity, as it still holds up as a damn good movie even over two and a half decades since its first release. So allow me, if I may, to look back on RoboCop and explain just why I enjoy it so much.

Welcome to Detroit in the near future. The city is falling apart thanks to the double-whammy of financial woes and rampant, unchecked crime. Desperate to combat this, the local government sells the Detroit Police Department to the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products, who plan to demolish the slums of "Old Detroit" and redevelop the area into a swanky utopia known as Delta City.

With the number of police officers killed in the line of duty escalating every day, OCP begins experimenting with robotic law enforcement. OCP senior president Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) suggests utilizing ED-209, a cumbersome tank-like droid originally prepped for military use. Jones, however, quickly finds himself embarrassed and his project ruined after ED-209 malfunctions during its initial demonstration and kills a board member. Ambitious executive Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) immediately seizes the opportunity and suggests his new "RoboCop" program, which would implant the brain of a recently deceased police officer into a robotic body. All it needs is a test subject.

One quickly presents itself in the form of Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), who we meet as he's transferring to a new precinct in the heart of Old Detroit. But what he and his new partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) initially believe will be a boring patrol takes a turn for the worst when they get involved in a car chase with notorious crime lord Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith). The chase leads them to an abandoned steel mill, where Murphy is brutally executed by Boddicker and his gang.

OCP claims what's left of Murphy's body and harvests bits and pieces for the RoboCop program, transforming the slain policeman into an amalgam of man and machine. RoboCop makes an immediate impact against violent crime and becomes a huge media sensation. But while Murphy's memory was believed to be erased during RoboCop's creation, elements of his life and death haunt him. He dreams of happy moments with his wife and son, has terrible nightmares about his death. As his humanity begins reasserting itself, RoboCop's existential crisis sends him on a mission to bring Alex Murphy's murderers to justice, a quest that through many twists and turns will lead him not only to Boddicker, but to OCP's board of directors as well.

RoboCop is one of those rare genre movies that succeeds on so many levels that nearly everyone who sees it can come away having enjoyed something about it. Do you want an exciting action movie chock full of violence? You've got it. How about a thought-provoking science-fiction movie? That's there too. Are you looking for a dark comedy satirizing Reagan-era America? Then you're in luck! RoboCop is all of those things in one lean, mean package. And that's part of the big reason the movie has managed to withstand the test of time. It's such a fantastically-made movie from practically every aspect that no matter how many times you watch it over any length of time, it never gets old. I've seen RoboCop dozens of times since the early part of the 1990s, and it feels brand new every time. That's how great it is.

The movie was directed by Paul Verhoeven, a filmmaker who knows no bounds when it comes to excess. He is the man who brought us Showgirls, after all. Subtlety and nuance aren't exactly his strong suits, and honestly, with RoboCop, he seems less interested in developing Murphy as a character before and after his transformation into RoboCop, and more interested in delivering fast-paced action and graphic violence. That's exactly what you get from Verhoeven here, but that's not a bad thing because it actually helps to make the movie pretty awesome. The movie's action sequences are exciting and intense, some of the best I've seen in any action flick past or present, thanks in part to the cinematography from frequent Verhoeven collaborator Jost Vocano and the absolutely amazing music composed by the late, great Basil Poledouris.

And in watching the movie, I'm amazed at just how well all the practical effects are. I've never been completely opposed to CGI use, but loving movies like I do, I'm a big proponent of practical effects and RoboCop is one reason why. They just make things seem more realistic, especially in the case of the stop-motion animation used for the ED-209 sequences. These moments are a lot more effective because ED-209 is an actual existing prop, as opposed to something some random person inserted into the movie with their computer weeks or even months after the scene was filmed.

I can also say the same for the movie's bloodshed. The movie is absolutely swimming in gore, especially if you're watching the extended edition rather than the theatrical cut. The MPAA gave RoboCop an X rating eleven times before finally giving it an R, and for good reason. It's respectable, though, because Verhoeven and the effects team working on the movie used practical effects when building the violence. Nowadays, filmmakers and studios would probably insist upon using CGI to do it all, not trusting makeup creators and stunt coordinators with making things look authentic.

And yes, the movie is perhaps excessively violent (like I said, Verhoeven is the kind of filmmaker who has no problem taking things too far), but it's also so consistently over the top that it veers into the realm of black comedy. Take the scene where ED-209 opens fire on the OCP executive, for example. The fact that the poor guy is basically being shot at with cannons and heavy machine guns is one thing (and the fact that it was actually loaded with live ammunition for some ungodly reason is another), but the fact that ED-209 just keeps shooting long after he's dead and reduced to a puddle of red goo is so ludicrous that it's hard to take it and scenes like it seriously. The only scene where it actually feels serious is when Boddicker's gang executes Murphy. The scene is the hardest to watch because it isn't played for the sake of laughs or entertainment. There's a certain emotional weight lifted by the outrageousness of it all and the knowledge that the bad guys all have it coming to them, but this scene doesn't have any of that. That absence just makes Murphy's death feel that much more brutal. It's, in my eyes, the one scene that lingers the most because it hits the hardest.

But if you've seen and enjoyed the movie, you know it has more going for it than just Verhoeven's ultraviolent style. There's also the intelligent script written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Drawing inspiration from British comic book 2000 AD's authoritarian supercop Judge Dredd for their main character, Neumeier and Miner use the opportunity to create a movie lampooning much of American society during the 1980s. While not everything has aged well, with references to Lee Iacocca and the Cold War particularly standing out, much of it is still relevant in some form or fashion today. The city of Detroit is being strangled to death by both its high crime rates and financial instability, mega-corporations have way too much financial and political influence within the government, television numbs us with crappy shows and incessant advertising for terrible products, and ratings-driven news programs only cover the important topics for a few seconds at a time while spending what seems like forever talking about unimportant claptrap. It's weird watching a movie made about things relevant in 1987 and realizing that it could still apply now.

It also helps that RoboCop has some truly awesome characters. While much of what makes them so great is the collaboration of Verhoeven and the actors, the movie's characters are as much a memorable part of the movie as anything else. Action movies from the '80s always needed good villains as much as they needed good heroes, and RoboCop has them in spades. They're some of the absolute meanest snakes I've seen, an utterly despicable group of bad guys that makes it all the more satisfying when RoboCop takes them out.

There is a slight negative to this, though. The problem I had is that I didn't feel we spent enough time getting to really know Alex Murphy before he became RoboCop. We do see RoboCop struggle with Murphy's memories at times, the machine struggling to accept that it was once a man and vice versa. But I thought these scenes would have been much more effective had Murphy not been killed off so soon into the movie. Maybe we could have had a scene or two with his family or something to establish what kind of guy Murphy is? Knowing what kind of filmmaker Verhoeven is, I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to hurry up and get to all the action and violence and RoboCop stuff, but come on now.

But two and a half decades later, it's a little late to change that now. The character, just like the rest, still works, and the great acting helps as well. Peter Weller was at the time best known as the star of another '80s cult classic, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, but it's RoboCop that people recognize him for now. And honestly, the character might not have been a dream role for him. Weller was stuck in a heavy, uncomfortable, and unbearably hot costume for hours at a time, so I'm sure that would hamper his performance to a degree. But Weller still does as fine a job as he can, playing RoboCop as cold and robotic yet with traces of his past humanity shining through. He counters this during his scenes as the still-human Murphy by playing him with a warmth and slyness. I noted earlier I would have enjoyed more scenes with Murphy before he became RoboCop, and with Weller in the role, those scenes could have been great.

I also thought Nancy Allen did a fine job as Murphy's partner Anne Lewis, but she doesn't really get a whole lot to do during the movie. Where the really enjoyable acting comes from are the movie's bad guys. While he isn't actually playing a villain per se, Miguel Ferrer is a lot of fun in his role. The character of Bob Morton is cocky, brash, ambitious, and a total sleazeball, and Ferrer plays it perfectly. He might not be playing a very likable guy, but Ferrer's great performance makes Morton a douchebag worth watching.

Getting to the movie's true bad guys, Ronny Cox provides some quality acting as the vicious Dick Jones. He takes the idea of a corrupt corporate executive and cranks the "corrupt" part up to eleven, playing Jones as utterly heartless and self-serving. He doesn't care if his products have flaws that could be fatal as long as clients buy them, and he has no problem intimidating people or having them killed outright if they make him look bad or disrespect him. It's this maliciousness that Cox brings to the part that makes it work.

While Cox is good, though, I'd be willing to say that he's outshined by Kurtwood Smith. Smith's appearance here is one of his two most famous roles, the other being Red Forman from That '70s Show, and for good reason. He turns Clarence Boddicker into one of the coolest movie villains I've ever seen, playing him with an air of ruthlessness and unpredictability, and a cold, calculating demeanor that makes you want RoboCop to get his hands on him as soon as possible. And Smith does it with a flair that makes it seem like Boddicker's having the time of his life in every scene (except for the ones where things don't go his way, anyway), which makes him so fascinating and downright entertaining to watch.

And if RoboCop is anything at all, it's certainly entertaining. That's probably the biggest reason it's held up so well for so many years. The violence is too much for some, I understand, but lovers of sci-fi and action movies continue to sing RoboCop's praises to this day because it's quite simply one of the most fun entries in either of those genres. Some critics initially dismissed the movie when it was released in 1987 based on the title and concept alone, since it's most assuredly the kind of thing you'd expect out of some wacky B-movie. But it's more than just that, and at the end of the day, RoboCop is a movie that certainly should be seen if you haven't had the chance yet. Sequels and remake be damned, RoboCop has earned its status as a classic and I'll proudly recommend it to anyone.

Final Rating: ****