ROBOCOP
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Featherweight and violent super-hero comic book on film about a cyborg policeman protecting the streets of Detroit. Paul Verhoeven is one of the last directors I would expect to make this fun but unoriginal action film.
The place is Detroit. the time is some undefinable date in the future. Law enforcement is no longer done by government and is instead contracted out to the giant corporation, Omni Consumer Products. Two models of mechanized policemen have been developed by OCP. One if the ED-209, a kind of walking tank combined with the artificial intelligence to take over standard cop-on-the-beat responsibilities. The other model is "Robocop," a cyborg incorporating human and mechanical parts but requiring a human brain to run the device. Just as the ED-209s are about to be mobilized, the model proves to have difficulties and instead, a recently murdered policeman, Murphy (played by Peter "Buckeroo Banzai" Weller), is robocized and resurrected as Robocop. Three guesses what crime Robocop wants to solve.
In fact, rarely does anyone need more than one guess about anything in ROBOCOP. The plot is supremely cliched. The resurrected-hero idea has been used many times before, from the "Six-Million-Dollar Man" to Remo Williams to the Lone Ranger. The "honest police under corrupt leadership" plot is done two or three times a year, it seems. Scenes of hoods shooting at Robocop to no effect are virtual dramatizations of scenes in "Superman" comics half a century old. The only place the script becomes at all creative is in extrapolations of society some (inconsistent) number of years into the future. By the look of cars and clothing styles, this film could be taking place tomorrow. As far as the technology and changes to society (like contracted police protection), the film still could be thirty or forty years into the future.
And some things might not make much sense whenever they take place. The ED-209 is nearly useless as a surrogate policeman. It is too big and bulky to do anything but travel on flat terrain and blast away. Robocop has only a little more finesse. If I lived in the Detroit of this film the one thing that would scare me more than crime would be the possibility that Robocop might come to my rescue. There is no better way to parlay a $100 robbery into a $100,000 damage-repair bill than to call on the "Flatfoot of Steel." And with what Robocop must cost OCP in police brutality suits, they could probably hire an army of old-fashioned humans.
But the biggest surprise about ROBOCOP is that it is directed by Paul Verhoeven. This film is an entirely new style for the director of SOLDIER OF ORANGE, SPETTERS, FLESH AND BLOOD and THE FOURTH MAN. Although the latter two films were in spots quite as violent as ROBOCOP, all four of Verhoeven's previous films were aimed at a more mature audience. ROBOCOP is his first film aimed at the audiences who make floors sticky. Where films like THE FOURTH MAN had occasional touches of Kurt Russell, ROBOCOP has more of a tendency to fade into KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE.
One final comment: Basil Poledouris, who has a nasty habit of giving films better musical scores than they deserve (e.g., BLUE LAGOON, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, RED DAWN, and AMERIKA), has once again shown up his director by making his score the best thing in the film. Rate this one a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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