Robocop (1987)
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ROBOCOP (1987) - film review
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Robocop Behind the Scenes featurette |
The story is simple. In the near future, Alex Murphy, played by Peter Weller, is a hot-shot cop who has been transferred to the worst precinct in Detroit. Murphy and new partner, Anne Lewis, played by Nancy Allen, try to apprehend the vicious criminal Clarence Boddicker and his gang after one of the heists. The duo track Boddicker, played with salacious glee by Kurtwood Smith, to an abandoned steel mill, but Murphy is captured and brutally tortured and left for dead. What remains of Murphy is ‘salvaged’ and turned into a cyborg police enforcer known as Robocop. In time, despite being programmed to supress human emotions, the memories and personality traits of Murphy begin to assert themself over the cyborg.
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In parallel with Robocop’s journey, the audience is shown that Omni Consumer Products, the company that developed Robocop, is itself rife with corruption. Dick Jones, the company’s second-in-charge, played by the wonderful Ronny Cox, is hell-bent on winning OCP a massive police contract with his ED-209 automated battle droid. Jones, however, is beaten to the punch when ED-209 fails a demonstration test and executes an OCP junior executive. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, Bob Morton, another OCP executive, played by Miguel Ferrer, offers OCP’s President, played by Dan O’Herlihy, the opportunity to develop Robocop in place of Ed-209. This boardroom ambush sets up a rivalry between Jones and Morton that ends up costing Morton his life but gives him vengeance form the grave.
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Second theatrical trailer |
Robocop, with partner Lewis, uncover a connection between Clarence Boddicker and Dick Jones which makes them as big a threat to Jones as Morton. Despite Boddicker’s gang’s best efforts to destroy Robocop, he lures them back to the steel mill where their original encounter with Murphy took place. Fittingly, he dispenses with them one-by-one, but both he and Lewis are left battered and injured. Robocop makes his way to OCP headquarters and reveals to its senior management team that Dick Jones is responsible for killing Bob Morton. In one final act of defiance, Jones takes Dan O’Herlihy’s OCP boss hostage. At first, Robocop is unable to act as his programming prevents him from acting against an OCP employee. Enraged by Jones’s actions, OCP’s boss fires him. Robocop is swift to act, shooting Jones multiple times. Jones stumbles backwards and falls through a smashed window to the ground below. The film ends with Dan O’Herlihy’s character congratulating Robocop on his good shooting and then asking the cyborg his name. Robocop responds, “Murphy”.
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There are many elements that make ROBOCOP an important science fiction film. Its ‘tone’ is one of those elements and, with THE TERMINATOR, depicted a realistic form of science fiction that showed audiences that the ‘future’ wasn’t always thousands of years from the present. With the exception of Robocop and ED-209, all the other parts of the film could be from the present day. More recent examples of this type of film-making include Christopher Nolan and Neil Blomkamp. Nolan’s DARK KNIGHT trilogy has been critically-acclaimed for its ‘grounded-in-reality’ approach, while Blomkamp’s DISTRICT 9 is very similar to the urban its urban degeneration and ‘Us & Them’ drama of the alien ‘Prawns’ and the humans.
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ROBOCOP like all good science fiction films, also has meaning and message layered into the story, transforming it from a formulaic action movie into an important entertainment statement. Alex Murphy’s journey has spiritual and mythological antecedents; the most obvious being the Jesus Christ analogy of the saviour risen from the dead. There’s the obvious ‘Good versus Evil’, with only Dan O’Herlihy’s OCP boss character being allowed to have any shade of grey. The biggest idea theme contained within ROBOCOP is, without doubt, its commentary on the concept of ‘Corporate America’. It’s a scathing commentary on the excess of late 1980s ‘greed is good’ and ‘win at all cost’ mentality of American business at the time. Two sides of this same excess are shown through the characters of Bob Morton and Dick Jones. Morton, despite being an unscrupulous corporate animal, at least has the thought to bring Robocop into existence and inadvertently bring something better to the people of Detroit. Dick Jones, on the other hand, is out to control the balance of power between law enforcement and criminals.
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The other big theme of ROBOCOP is violence. Verhoeven, along with scripters Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner, do not shy away from using violence as one of their key story-telling techniques. A sub-text exists within ROBOCOP that suggests people must suffer before something good can happen to them. The violence perpetrated upon Alex Murphy by Clarence and his gang is disturbing but not without purpose. For Murphy to become a “better man”, he is literally deconstructed by multiple shotgun blasts and then put back together a stronger, better version of himself. Indeed, the brutality of the violence is eventually stirs Murphy’s supressed memories and allows him to find the balance between man and machine that leads him to become more than the sum of his parts.
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ROBOCOP also grapples with the concept of duality and, despite outward appearances and actions, the core belief system of an individual will eventually assert itself. This is true of Robocop/Murphy and it is true of Dick Jones, the underlying antagonist, who, when all other dangers have been faced, is the true villain of the story. Verhoeven returned to this theme in TOTAL RECALL, his 1991 Arnold Schwarzenegger science fiction film. The latter film is far more ambiguous than ROBOCOP because the film also uses the concept of multiple realities and multiple personalities.
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One of the keys to the film’s success is the talented group of actors Verhoeven cast to tell his story. Peter Weller was already known to science fiction audiences from the cult film BUCKAROO BANZAI, but his turn as Alex Murphy/Robocop demonstrated the full range of his talent. Not only does he capture the emotion of a man in turmoil, Weller brings unique robot-like mannerisms that convince the audience that he has been completely transformed into a cyborg. Ronny Cox as Dick Jones and Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker really get to chew the scenery as the film’s two villains. Cox’s performance was an eye-opener for audiences, because at the time, he was known as the tough but likeable Lieutenant Bogomil in the BEVERLY HILLS COP films. The other supporting actors also get their moments to shine, especially Miguel Ferrer as Bob Morton. The only weak link is Nancy Allen as Anne Lewis, but that because she’s the person who most closely resembles a normal human being and her actions appear understated by comparison to the other characters.
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ROBOCOP may be a little dated in terms of film-making technique and, by today’s standards; it has a limited number of effects shots. What it does have is a strong central premise and a great many talented cast and crew who were able to craft a classic science fiction film that remains as good today as when it was released in 1987. Its message is clear: the world can be a bad place and violence is real, but there will always be people, no matter what their form, who are prepared to stand up and fight against evil.
Robocop - Lobby Cards
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