RoboCop (USA, 1987)
director: Paul Verhoeven screenwriter: Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner stars: Peter Weller (Alex J. Murphy / RoboCop), Nancy Allen (Anne Lewis), Ronny Cox (Dick Jones), Kurtwood Smith (Clarence J. Boddicker), Miguel Ferrer (Robert Morton), Robert Doqui (Sgt. Reed), Dan O'Herlihy (The Old Man), Ray Wise (Leon Nash), Felton Perry (Johnson) MPAA rating: R Review: **** (out of ****)
When "RoboCop" first premiered in 1987, it looked like just another gimmicky sci-fi thriller quickly thrown together to make a couple of bucks before hitting the video shelves and falling into obscurity. It was directed by Paul Verhoeven, then an unknown director who had made a few art films in his native Holland. "RoboCop" looked cheesy all over, from the poster design, to the tag line ("Part man. Part machine. All cop"), to the goofy title.
However, when audiences went to see it, they were surprised to find an extremely well-made, often humorous comic book revenge fantasy with an underlying subtext of constant satirical jabs at American corporate domination and capitalism in general. A hybrid of B-movies, video games, and societal satire, "RoboCop" was much more than it appeared on the surface. It has only been through the passage of time and subsequent viewings that all its subtleties have fully emerged.
"RoboCop" takes place some time in the near future in Detroit, the city whose massive steel mills once stood for the grand possibilities of American manufacturing power. However, when the film opens, Detroit is sagging. Riddled by crime and lagging in industrial output, the city has become so pathetic that it has turned to a private corporation, Omni Consumer Products (OCP), to manage the police departments.
OCP, run by a serious old businessman referred to only as The Old Man (Dan O'Herlihy), is in the midst of its own struggles. Here, "RoboCop" take a pointed look at the battlefield that is American business by focusing on the intensifying battle between Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), an older vice president who is losing his edge, and Richard Morton (Miguel Ferrer), the hotshot young executive who wants to take his place at any cost.
Jones' solution to Detroit's crime problem is a massive militaristic robot, ED-209, which is brought to life with stunning stop-motion animation by Phil Tippett ("Return of the Jedi," "Jurassic Park"). Unfortunately, in one the movie's funniest and goriest scenes, ED-209 goes berserk in the boardroom during a demonstration in disarming technique, and turns a volunteering executive into Swiss cheese. Morton doesn't waste a moment, jumping right into the fray and offering up his RoboCop contingency program. "I'm sure we can have prototype ready in 90 days," he declares.
The man who eventually becomes that first RoboCop prototype is a policeman named Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), a good-hearted family man who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and his partner, Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), attempt to foil a robbery heist masterminded by evil crime lord and gleeful cop killer Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith). Murphy and Lewis track Boddicker and his gang back to an abandoned steel mill, and although Lewis escapes alive, Murphy is captured by the sadistic gang of thugs. After a prolonged torture in which his hand is blown off and he is shot repeatedly with shotguns, Murphy is killed with a bullet to the head.
This entire sequence is filmed in bloody, graphic violence, and it is a major turning point that defies all expectations and puts the audience on edge for the remainder of the film. Until this moment, the tone of "RoboCop" had been fairly light-hearted and downright comical at times, especially during its satires of commercial television. Verhoeven said he intentionally filmed Murphy's death in such graphic detail for two reasons. First, he wanted the audience to sympathize with Murphy, because he dies only thirty minutes into the film after being into only a few previous scenes, hardly enough for the audience to understand his character. Secondly, Verhoeven wanted the murder to serve as a kind of Christ-like crucifixion, with Murphy then resurrected as RoboCop. (Verhoeven is very intent on the Christ allegorical aspect of the film, but I feel it's a bit of stretch).
When Murphy is pronounced dead at the hospital, his body is given over to OCP to become the first RoboCop prototype. By combining the remains of his body with a massive, technological suit of body armor and computer chips, Murphy is transformed into a bullet-proof cyborg law enforcement officer. The only problem is that OCP didn't manage to erase his mind completely, and he is left with trace memories of his now lost family and, even more importantly, the vile gangsters that murdered him in his previous life.
In this way, "RoboCop" becomes a film about identity. Murphy is now part man and part machine; but he is fully neither, and therein lies the tragedy. He is caught between two worlds-- the flesh and the iron. Indeed, he is caught in the crux of other vexing situations as well, including the dilemma between enforcing the law while existing as the creation of a corrupt private company that has vested interest in his not doing his job.
"RoboCop" is a hard movie to pin down simply because it is so many things. It is intensely violent (over two minutes of footage had to be cut to avoid an "X" rating), but it is also quite funny. The humor is sometimes elevated and satirical, and can't be completely grasped on the first viewing. But other times it is bawdy, cheap humor, such as a commercial advertising a board game called "Nuke 'Em" (much of the humor is directed specifically at 80's social problems).
The movie is greatly aided by fine performance by all the actors. It is easy to overlook Peter Weller as the title character because he spends most of the film encased in a metal suit. But, like the great silent performances, his is mostly body language. When, at the end of the film, his helmet is removed and we see his face again, he makes it a great melodramatic moment with his sad, dour eyes. When we finally get to see the two halves -- Murphy and RoboCop -- coming together, it has a disarming, mystical quality about it.
Like many crime films, "RoboCop" relies a great deal on its villains, and Kurtwood Smith is simply great as the maniacal Boddicker. With his receding hairline, intellectual glasses, and sneering grin, he is evil personified in an ambitious street hoodlum. In every scene he occupies, Smith chews the scenery with psychotic glee, and many of his lines were improvised during filming. His character is frightening simply because he always seems to be in such command of everything around him. He is the ringleader in the gruesome killing of Murphy, so when RoboCop gets to throw him through a number of plate-glass windows and reduce him to a sobbing wimp, it's a guilty pleasure to watch.
Of course, the other star of the film is director Paul Verhoeven, who quickly rose in the ranks after "RoboCop." He solidified his position three years later with the Arnold Schwarzegger vehicle "Total Recall," and then entered American film lore forever with his two sexy sleazefests "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls."
However one feels about his later output, it's hard to deny that Verhoeven's talents are on full display here. He never allows the audience to get fully settled because the tone switches so easily from humor to melodrama to adventure to gruesome violence. And, despite these drastically varying elements, Verhoeven manages to keep it all rolled up into one slick package that constantly plunges ahead.
©1998 James Kendrick
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