ROBOCOP 2
C'mon, it's better than part 3

  Widely hated even as far as sequels go, I've always found RoboCop 2 to be like a cruder, less sophisticated and (somehow) nastier version of the first one, and since it doesn't completely botch the job, then it's still pretty good in my book.  Any movie that features a neck-breaking like the one we're treated to here (twist, twist) can't be all bad.

RoboCop's back - he's blue, for some reason, but he's back.  Old Detroit is in even worse shape than before (what the hell has RoboCop been doing all this time?), and on the verge of bankruptcy to boot.  OCP, still under the control of The Old Man (played by Dan O'Herlihy; this character seemed rather benevolent before but is now evil evil evil), is in a position to foreclose on the whole city, scrap it off piecemeal, and build the long-dreamed-of Delta City in its place.  And in desperation to find suitably motivated (that is, non-suicidal) human personalities to plant in the Newer Bigger And Better version of RoboCop, well, you wouldn't BELIEVE what kind of brain they choose to insert into this particular law enforcement droid.

Let's see what else we can stir into the mix.  RoboCop gets saddled down with about five hundred new directives, everything from "Avoid interpersonal conflicts" to "Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms", which is sure to cut down on the time he spends stalking Murphy's widow and kid.  There's a gun-toting, like-a-sailor swearing, drug-dealing little kid, possibly the most despicable juvenile character in cinema history (why his exit is made out to be a thing of tragedy is beyond me).  John Glover hawking a lethal-response car "alarm".  An all-too-brief (but hilarious) cameo from ED-209.  The leader of a drug gang (actually, a drug CULT!  Eek!), who's like a narcoto-terrorist, or something, makes trouble even though he's dead.  Police are unhappier than ever, with their pensions cancelled and everything, so they're on strike (again?  Still?).  And the drug in question here, Nuke - it's like crack on crack.  Oh yeah - and there's also RoboCop 2 (what, you thought it was just the title?), a big, clunky, stop-motion version of our hero, and the smart money's on there being a climactic duke-out between the two, with more dead-or-wounded innocent bystanders than you've ever seen in your life.

Acting's about the same caliber as the original.  Weller still delivers in a sad-eyed monotone, and Nancy Allen returns (with, unfortunately, less to do, but I like her haircut) as Louis.  Those two are really the only consistently likeable characters; just about everybody's a villain here.  O'Herlihy does an about-face from the benevolent dictator of the original and gives us a Bill Gates-like corporate megalomaniac.  Jeff McCarthy is suitably arrogant and heartless as the company's lawyer, and Tom Noonan is a real hoot as Cain, the drug cult leader ("Jesus had days like this!").  The only actors who don't hold up their end are Gabriel Damon as the kid (done no favors by the script) and Willard E. Pugh as the wacky mayor of Old Detroit (though I liked his delivery of "Y'ol' senile bastard!").

This movie repeats the TV-programming concepts of the original, and ratchets them up a notch (take one ad for OCP Communications where a guy kills himself over losing "the account" because he chose another company, or the "Sunblock 5000" ad which warns that use of Sunblock 5000 may cause skin cancer).  To their credit, screenwriters Frank Miller and Walon Green understand well what made the original successful (RoboCop enters an arcade full of drug-dealing kids and says "Isn't this a school day?"), and although the ultimate result is hardly flawless, there's a good effort here, and hardly the kiddiefied crapwagon of their part 3 (which didn't have anything nearly as funny as the scene where a woman picks up a row of Nuke vials and blissfully waxes, "Made in America!" to which Cain responds "We're gonna make that mean something again!").

The story is a little shaky, especially in how the increasingly fascinating mental/emotional/spiritual issues between RoboCop and Murphy are introduced and dropped into a bottomless pit as soon as they start really going somewhere.  But the aspect of all of the new directives is very funny, and I also liked the boardroom scene in which OCP executives toss around ideas as to how to improve him.  Can a mayor, on his own, mortgage his whole city (without consult of city council) to a private company...or, for that matter, legalize a drug with the infamy we're to believe Nuke has?  (what drug gang stands to GAIN money from having their drug legalized, anyway?) And just who's picked to be the brain inside of the new RoboCop will make you scratch your head; what, Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't available? (when they mention just what kind of person is needed, it seems to me a scouting-out of ALS patients would be ideal, but then we wouldn't as likely get this robot to go berserk, eh?)

At any rate, there are two scenes in this movie which achieve a fantastic resonance - one as drama, one, horror.  The first is when RoboCop is browbeaten into denying the humanity inside him, to them, to himself, ultimately, to the wife he still loves.  The second is in RoboCop 2's first appearance, a warehouse massacre that scares the crap out of me every time.  Shot mostly in the dark, showing only the smallest bits of its yet-unseen mechanical villain, this scene is more blood-freezing than most that I find in even really good horror movies; only the presence of that wacky mayor blunts its impact.

Yessir, RoboCop 2 is quite the machine.  Not nearly the hunkered-down cool of ED-209, this is more like a walking cathedral of carnage, with all sorts of unwieldy body parts sticking out of it for some lethal purpose.  When it's officially introduced to the public, it's a little less intimidating under the harsh glare of obviousness, but it's still a very cool machine.  (note the model of the proposed Delta City that it stands next to in this scene - it's constructed of famous towers and skyscrapers from across the world.  Calgary's own Calgary Tower is in there somewhere, but it's not visible from any of the angles the movie allows us to see it from.  I saw it in a picture in Starlog.)

The violence in RoboCop 2 is even more extreme than in the original, though it frequently lacks the original's flair for making it so wildly inappropriate that it's hilarious.  (notable exceptions - a kid's baseball teams ransacks an electronics store.  One kid is repeatedly whacking the owner in the knee with a baseball bat, while another, filming the incident on a stolen video camera, urges "Harder!"  And of course, there's the "Thank you for not smoking!" moment we all saw in the trailer.)  RoboCop endures a mutilative indignity here that's on a par with Murphy's murder in the original, as the cruelty of his tormentors is every bit as off-putting as that of Boddicker and his gang.

The critics hated this movie, western moviegoers ignored it, fans of the original decried what they saw as just another stupid sequel. It's too long, too awkwardly plotted and that kid is a bad decision of Jar-Jar Binks-like proportions.  Still, I liked it.  Where else am I going to see a woman contemplate the erotic potential of a pair of pliers?

The ads for this movie - which was released in 1990, just as the thrash metal scene had reached its commercial and creative apex and was about to burn out entirely - proclaimed that we would behold "MAXIMUM THRASH".  Sum total of metal on this soundtrack: one song by big-haired "hard" rockers Babylon A.D..

RoboCop 2 was directed by Irvin Kershner, who previously directed The Empire Strikes Back, of course.  No, this is no ESB, or even a RoboCop.  But it's a pretty entertaining film, certainly not as bad as its reputation would suggest.  It flopped over here, but was a big hit overseas, big enough to put RoboCop 3 into production, although by the time it was done it sat on the shelf for two years while all that crap with Orion's little money problem was getting sorted out.  It wasn't worth the wait.

BACK TO MAIN PAGE BACK TO THE R's