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Year: 1987 Production: Orion Director: Paul Verhoeven Starring: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith Screenwriter: Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner 102 minutes; Color
Dutch director Verhoeven here unusually made a successful transition from foreign art films - the violent medieval epic Flesh+Blood (1985) and the perverse thriller The Fourth Man (1983) - to a US populist blockbuster. A corrupt corporation in near-future Detroit manufactures a prototype cyborg (Weller) in which the head of a morally wounded policeman is integrated with a powerful metal body. The brutal extermination of criminals and cleansing of the corrupt business community that follow are directed with a blend of technical skill, low cunning and genuine artistry that is both dismaying and breathtaking. The casual cruelties of the ongoing bloodbath seem merely a cynical exploitation of the worst aspects of audience voyeurism, but the film also contains a density of information about, and a sharp satirical observation of, this future world that are both rare and welcome in sf cinema. Verhoeven went on to direct Total Recall. The sequels are Robocop 2 and Robocop 3. |
| The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |
One of the best sf/action movies of the decade, Robocop marvellously combines the gung-ho vigilante vengeance plot necessary to capture a mass audience with a rigorously well worked-out futuristic environment, an engagingly cynical view of a big business-dominated America and a handful of genuinely sf ideas about the interface between technology and humanity. Murphy (Weller), an idealistic cop in the near future, is shot to pieces in downtown Detroit, but the corporation which has just privatized the city's law enforcement agencies has a use for the leftovers. His limbs are replaced, his body is armored and his brain is wiped and particularly replaced with a computer, and soon he is back on the streets as Robocop, an automated warrior on the beat, who politely solves any and all crimes that he comes across. Typical of his mechanical but humane approach is an incident in which he calmly disposes of a mugger who has been terrorizing a woman, and picks up the damsel in distress, informing her, "You have been emotionally traumatized, I'll alert the nearest rape crisis center." Gradually, however, Robocop comes to distrust the cynical corporation men (Cox, Ferrer) who have control of him - and who have programmed him not to intervene whenever an official of the corporation is breaking the law - and to regain part of his lost humanness. Amid the brilliantly choreographed action and violence, Verhoeven even finds time for a little understated sentiment, as the armored colossus lumbers around the home he used to own or eats babyfood while talking to his ex-partner (Allen). In addition to the conspiracy-revenge storyline, in which Robocop tracks down corruption, from the criminals who killed him right up to the corporate executive who runs them, the film includes plenty of detail about its invented future. TV commericials, overheard newscasts, infantile sit-coms and legal details all hint at the kind of cyberpunk world that has given birth to Robocop. Following Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984), this adapts some of the ideas of written sf - from Isaac Asimov to Philip K. Dick - with regards to robotics and their effect on society. In addition to the Robocop, the film features an extremely menacing non-anthropomorphic law enforcement droid (ED-209) which has to be disabled, in one of many superb action sequences, by the cyborg who has made it obsolete. As its melodramatically evil villains suggest, this is essentially a comic strip movie; but it's a great comic strip movie. |
| The Overlook Film Encyclopedia - Science Fiction |