RoboCop (1987)

 

RoboCop has a lot of villains. Set in a future dystopian Detroit, the film reveals a city filled with criminals and crime, a dangerous and deadly place to be a police officer. On his first day in a new precinct, Murphy (Peter Weller) gets brutally killed by a gang of criminals led by Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker. (Yes, the guy who played the father on That 70s Show is a criminal mastermind/crime boss.) Murphy’s body is modified by OCP, a corporation that has taken control of the police department, and he becomes the cyborg RoboCop. He proves to be remarkably effective at police work, stopping a liquor store robbery, an attempted rape, and a tense hostage situation involving a political loser. Given that he’s a cyborg whose body is mostly metal and machine, he also can’t be easily hurt or killed either; he just needs to recharge now and then. During one of those recharging sessions, he has a series of flashbacks; his makers apparently didn’t erase everything. He remembers his wife and son, and more importantly, he remembers his murder. That sends him off on a quest to capture Boddicker and his accomplices, one of whom is played by Ray Wise before the TV shows Twin Peaks and Fresh Off the Boat, another of whom is played by Paul McCrane after the movie Fame but before the TV show E.R. The film actually includes quite a few reliable actors, including Nancy Allen as Murphy’s partner who witnesses his murder and tries to connect to him personally after he becomes RoboCop and Ronny Cox as the OCP executive whose failure to create a mechanical cop leads to the RoboCop program’s success, a move that makes him incredibly bitter and prone to a desire for revenge. In other words, he’s another villain. With all of its emphasis on crime, RoboCop is a very, very violent movie at times, and we aren’t spared from watching the grisly demise of several characters. Murphy’s death, for instance, is quite gruesome. It’s little wonder that the movie initially received an X rating due to its violent content; what we have now is the “softer” version, and it’s still quite shocking. The film is also much campier than I remembered from the last time I saw it decades ago. Weller’s deadpan reading of the line “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!” alone is laugh-inducing each time he states it. The director, Paul Verhoeven, isn’t known for his subtle touch; his later films include Basic Instinct, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers, none of them exactly masterpieces of keeping their moments from being laughable. On a side note, RoboCop shares with Starship Troopers the use of commercials that are sometimes funnier or more interesting than the rest of the movie. The one for a vehicle called the 6000 SUX is especially hilarious. I will admit that it’s a bit surprising that the film wasn’t nominated for Best Visual Effects, especially in a year with only two nominees in the category: Innerspace and Predator. (You might still be surprised to learn that Predator was NOT the winner.) If there’s a “deeper” message to RoboCop, it might be the warning against corporations taking control over police departments, the military, hospitals, etc. Of course, we haven’t heeded that warning at all, given how much those functions have become increasingly privatized since 1987. You’d think after watching OCP’s first attempt at a fully mechanized robot cop (Cox’s invention), we’d know better. Watching the ED-209 malfunction and kill a OCP executive is what actually provides the opportunity for Miguel Ferrer’s Morton at OCP to create RoboCop (and become a higher-ranking executive and turn into yet another villain and be targeted by his former boss and…). Maybe it’s also trying to suggest that no matter how mechanized or mechanical we might become, it’s our humanity or whatever is left of it that might save us. I doubt many viewers gave the film’s narrative a great deal of deep thought; they just enjoyed the fun of watching Weller as the former cop who can’t be stopped now that he’s a cyborg. It is a shame that the actor’s face and those hypnotic eyes are covered up for most of the film.

Oscar Win: Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing

Other Nominations: Best Film Editing and Best Sound