ROBOCOP
"I LIKE IT!!!"

  RoboCop is really the only cinema superhero to hold the slightest credibility for me since the first two Superman movies (well, Darkman was pretty cool too).  Legendary for its over-the-top violence (although the film was trimmed to avoid an X back when that wasn't the norm, it's still very brutal even by today's standards) and darkly comic vision of the future, it made a big splash with critics and audiences when it came out.  It was certainly the movie to see when I was in grade nine (though Alberta film ratings at the time forbade minors from entering R-rated movies even with an adult guardian, so scarcely anybody got to see it until it came out on video.   And when it did, I memorized every line.).

Taking place in the near future (the arcade game said 1994), we're introduced to "Old" Detroit (actually filmed in Dallas), which is, to say the least, going to hell in a handbasket.  A private corporation (Omni Consumer Products) has been contracted to fund and run the police.  Crime is at an all-time high (for Detroit!).  Cops are talking strike.  And cops are dying at a record rate with criminals bolder and more organized than ever, particularly those under one super-nasty scumbag king by the hopelessly unimposing name Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith).

So OCP tries to settle some of this by inventing a robot police officer, for all the reasons you might imagine.  The resulting ED-209 machine does, uh, not work out.  (the scene where this is demonstrated is priceless)  So a young upstart in the company (Miguel Ferrer) advances a similar but separate program, which would create a robotic police officer around the living brain of a human.

Just how this living brain is obtained is sure to make you think twice before signing your donor card.  A recently-transferred cop, Murphy (Peter Weller) is killed (quite gruesomely) in the line of duty by Boddicker and his crew.  So his brain, face and (presumably) a good chunk of his body is saved and grafted into this humanoid robot design, which proceeds to take the criminal underground of Old Detroit by storm, cleaning up the city like a wire brush under a toilet bowl rim, until it discovers its own identity and figures out just which criminals to go after.

The same summer of 1987 gave us Predator, which features the most hilariously macho dialogue I've ever heard.  Well, this movie is a close second ("Dead or alive, you're coming with me!" "Your move, creep!" "Bitches leave!"), but it tells a smarter story and has a more sly vision.

The RoboCop creation is a perfect blend of Weller's monotone (which, really, is how he acts all the time anyway) and what must have been an agonizing costume to wear for, uh, ten, sixteen, thirty-nine hours a day.  That costume alone should've got this movie nominated for a Costume Design Oscar, though of course it wasn't. (it was nominated for Sound and Editing, if you're curious)  One look at this guy and you know you'll never be able to talk or flirt your way out of a ticket.  When he saves a woman from being raped (and presumably murdered), his attempt to comfort her is so mechanical that it's hard not to laugh.  To him, even the people he's protecting are programs to be completed.

Just as splendid a creation is the stop-motion ED-209, which is like a thicker Imperial Scout Walker about the size of a small elephant with massive guns on each side.  It speaks with this basso profundo mutter and growls like a lion, shoots everything in sight, and is probably going to be burnt to a crisp if a fire breaks out and the elevators shut down (note what happens in his first encounter with RoboCop).  Ladies and gentlemen, I love the ED-209 and I want one for a pet, as long as it doesn't let itself get pushed around too much by Mr. Bun.

The acting is cartoonishly great all around.  Smith makes a wonderfully sleazy villain, and I have to wonder why most of the villain roles he got after this movie were corporate exec types.  An adorable Nancy Allen is fiery, sweet, and completely likeable as Murphy's partner who suspects that there might be somebody familiar underneath all that steel.  Ferrer is good as always, and Ronny Cox is enjoyably hissable as a meaner version of the kind of roles I just said Smith keeps getting these days.

Director Paul Verhoeven gives us a pretty interesting vision of the future, too, as we're given frequent looks at TV news, advertisements, and just what entertainment has been reduced to (one line: "I'll buy that for a dollar!").  Virtually every look into TV programming in this movie is guaranteed to produce a chuckle.  The pokes at consumerism, corporate-ization of public systems and services, love of guns, you name it (and let's not kid ourselves into thinking these are purely American traits) are frequent, funny and pointed.  It's a little easier to tell here than in Starship Troopers just how much we need to keep our tongues in cheek; after all, the characters in this movie KNOW their society is a mess.

This movie does fall prey to a number of clichés and headscratchers.  RoboCop is set out on the streets with complete police authority pretty much right out of the box.  The requisite "unorthodox resolution to a hostage situation" scene is here (and can you really see infrared impressions of people through walls?).  It's even got the black police captain who can't communicate under 110 decibels.  But most of this movie is fresh and fast, far more entertaining than just about anything you're likely to see in the next month or so.  And cartoon or not, RoboCop is pleasantly fleshed out as a hero, particularly when his self-awareness extends to wondering what happened to the family he left behind.  Seeing RoboCop come to terms with the Murphy inside him is always interesting.  Besides, isn't it just neat how he doesn't need the help of a sketch artist to find suspects?

Does the violence go too far sometimes?  Most of us guys are pretty desensitized to people getting shot in the nuts these days (am I the only guy who squirms a little harder when it's female genital mutilation that's suggested, such as in Seven?).  But I have to admit, I get pretty uncomfortable every time I see Murphy's murder; it's gruesome as hell, and the glee his tormentors take in it (taunting "Does it hurt?" in coddling voices) is sickening, going well beyond the film's apparent intent.  Most of the carnage is more enjoyable than not, however; the most inspired moments being the previously mentioned "ED-209's glitch" scene, and another involving toxic waste.

Once I heard of a different ending to this movie that was in the novelization, which I never read, so this is just heresay, but if memory serves, it somehow involved dogs, and Boddicker getting impaled and hung up on a wall in the industrial plant.  I have no idea how true this is.  What IS true is that a whole lotta cuts were made to this movie to get an R rating; the R-rated version is the only one I've seen.

I've never seen his early Dutch-language films, but of the ones I've seen, RoboCop is certainly Verhoeven's best.  It gave rise to two sequels, a TV series and (I hear) an animated series.  The first sequel was the only one I cared for, even though most people hated it (but you'd never know it from the user comments at the IMDb).  If you haven't seen this one yet, where have you been?

(Trivia note: in 1989, for a high school creative writing class I wrote a lengthy story called "Twenty Seconds To Comply" in which an OCP heir is sent back in time to 1987 with an ED-209 to stop the New Kids On The Block before they could rise to popularity.  It got a pretty good mark, and became an instant cult hit at school.)

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