“Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!”

Justin’s rating: Stairs are my main weakness, too

Justin’s review: When Paul Verhoeven set out to make a satirical flick about ’80s excess, police privatization, and over-the-top action flicks, I don’t think that even he had an idea of what a cultural touchstone that RoboCop would end up being.

This was a prime example of a movie so cool and iconic that so many kids way under the recommended viewing age made it their mission in life to see before they even went through puberty. And even though Verhoeven aims this movie like barbed darts at society’s flaws, it didn’t stop him from creating a singularly amazing film that became one of the best of the ’80s scifi scene.

I’d never actually reviewed the original — my favorite — before now and took that as an excuse to wallow in excellence and excessiveness for an evening. And it was on sale, so go me!

There are plenty of running themes in RoboCop, but the most predominant of them is the question of what makes us human. Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is a Detroit cop who ends up becoming an unwitting target practice for a nasty gang of thugs. Quite dead indeed, his body (or select parts of it) are repurposed by ethically dubious Omni Consumer Products to become the first in a new line of cyborg cops.

Hey, at least it’s not death, although it’s close enough. OCP wipes Murphy’s memories and programs him like a computer chip to be the ultimate law enforcer. He’s given this sleek thigh-holstered pistol that fires in rapid bursts, a tank’s worth of armor, and plenty of other toys to assist in his efforts to clean up the streets of a ravaged future Detroit. Only his bubblegum-blowing partner Lewis (Nancy Allen) suspects that the man is still buried in all that tech and tries to support his arduous journey back to humanity.

But there are plenty of obstacles to overcome, including his own programming, a sinister giant robot named ED-209, an evil OCP exec, and the gang that killed him the first time around.

What follows is hydraulic-powered, computer-aimed action that has a weight and texture to it that you don’t get with your modern action stars (or even the RoboCop remake). Robo moves in a very distinctive way that begged to be copied by fans, and he goes about his work with deliberate, precise, and potent operation. You get how strong and near invincible this guy is, even as he’s being thrown through walls by a murder-dog robot.

As good as RoboCop the character and design is, he wouldn’t be as successful if the rest of the movie didn’t also have its charms. For starters, the villains (plural) are so evil and slimy, from Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker to Miguel Ferrer’s Bob Morton to Ronny Cox’s Dick Jones, and you want to see justice done to all of them. They’re funny, too, with some of the best quotes, and that reminds me how screenwriters used to put some actual thought into their bad guys once upon a time.

There’s definitely a delicious streak of black humor that runs through this entire film, with perhaps the most shocking laugh generated by ED-209 going berserk during a demonstration in a way that used up every blood squib that Hollywood could produce that week. The special effects are top notch for the ’80s, with special praise deserved for the stop motion. And it’s masterfully shot, sometimes putting the audience in the first-person perspective looking out through RoboCop’s eyes.

Speaking of eyes, one of my absolute favorite moments is when RoboCop’s being thrashed and the camera zooms in on his broken visor to see a very human eye looking out in fear. You can see Murphy’s humanity breaking through, and you cheer that hatching — if he can survive, that is.

But if I’m being honest, what I like best about this film is very basic indeed: Seeing an invincible, unstoppable force of justice confront criminal scum — and send that scum running for its life. Robocop is like the inverse of every slasher movie, and he’s glorious.

RoboCop marks the first of the Verhoeven scifi trilogy, followed by Total Recall and Starship Troopers. All three have their charms, but I think he knocked it so far out of the park the first time around.

Rich’s rating: Serve The Public Trust, Protect The Innocent, Uphold The Law, Entertain The Masses.

Rich’s review: Being a young man of a certain age, I can look back at the films of the late ’80s with a kind of nostalgia that its hard to put into words. Things were great for us rowdy young teens back then, especially in cinema, because the mid-to-late ’80s gave us a number of action role models all in one big lump. For me, four films from that era defined everything I wanted from my action films from that point on – we were the generation of John McClaine in Nakatomi Plaza, Dutch Callaghan against the invisible Predator, Ripley, Hicks, and the rest of the Colonial Marines against the Xenomorphs… and RoboCop, ED209, and Clarence Boddicker and his gang.

Every guy in my class saw all those films by the time they were 13. They were the talk of the schoolyard, and with the combination of guns, explosions, punchy one liners, fistfights, more guns, more explosions, and a combined body count reaching into the thousands, these films fired our imaginations and made us the stable, balanced, and well adjusted human beings we are today. Before sequels and censorship and slightly more responsible and less completely gratuitously violent stories came to the fore, these films were burned into our minds, and endless weeks were spent in discussion as to whether Robocop could beat The Predator, or what John McClaine would do if the Aliens took over Nakatomi Plaza instead.

And so, it was a nostalgia-flavoured flashback to age 15 when I watched RoboCop on TV again last week.

So here’s the deal for everyone who’s been living under a rock for the last 20 years. At some unspecified time in the near future, Detroit is nothing more than a wretched hive of scum and villainy that would put Mos Eisley to shame. The local cops try their best to keep the streets sane, but are outnumbered, outgunned, and even worse, the criminals have blown up every donut stand within a 10-mile radius. Things are looking seriously bad for the boys in blue.

Enter mega-corporation OCP. OCP have been trying to market an urban pacification robot to take over from the police. However, their recent results have been less than successful, including a particularly grizzly malfunction of their most up-to-date unit, ED209, which leaves an OCP executive with more holes in him than the plot of American Psycho 2. Desperate to get back in the public’s good books, OCP sees a unique opportunity when veteran cop Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is viciously blown to little bits by local ganglord and all-around bad egg Clarence Boddicker.

Taking what’s left of Murphy, OCP fuses his remaining bits and pieces together with their latest machine technology to create RoboCop, the ultimate in heavy metal justice. Robo, together with former partner Lewis, then go on a clean-up-the-city spree that ultimately brings RoboCop back into conflict with Boddicker and his gang of scoundrels.

RoboCop is cool in so many ways its hard to count them all. RoboCop’s gun is cool, his holster built into his leg is cool, his magical targeting device that lets him bounce bullets around like a powerball while dispatching any nearby criminal elements is very cool. He can see through walls, he can punch through walls. And he’s got a huge nasty spike that pops out of his fists for good measure as well. But mainly as a teen I loved him for his ability to walk into a warehouse full of armed men and dispatch them all in a haze of gunfire and explosions that would make a Fourth of July fireworks display slink away in shame.

Despite the films utterly blatant pure action cheese, it’s also very cynical and subversive at times, something that it’s hard to appreciate when you’re 12, but it also means when you go back to it as a young adult, it still holds your attention. The commercials for the products of the near future are darkly hilarious. Clarence and his band of nogoodniks are excellently portrayed and well-fleshed out villains, which in my opinion, makes the confrontations between them and old Domehead far more meaningful than a simple “here is the big bad guy, lets blow him away” kind of thing. By the end of the film, if you don’t REALLY want to see Clarence get what’s coming to him, you’ve just got no soul, and you get no cookies round at my house.

It is kind of dated, I’ll admit — but for a film made in 1987, there aren’t too many effects shots that will have you cringing in your seat. The acting is kind of hammy in places, and there’s really no deeper meaning to it than “good is good, bad isn’t good”. But sometimes you don’t look for deeper meanings; sometimes all you want to see is a man in a metal suit blowing away everyone around him with a really cool looking pistol. And if that’s what you want, RoboCop will be right up your dark and criminal infested alley.

Intermission!

• Opening with fake news and a sports heart by Yamaha set the tone nicely
• “Attempted murder? It’s not like he killed someone!”
• Lewis’ ticked-off look and karate revenge on the criminal makes me think she should get a place in the ’80s female action hall of fame. And her bubblegum!
• I love ED-209’s growls and heavy mechanical sounds
• Call a medic for a guy who’s been shot about 40 times
• “Can you fly, Bobby?”
• When they shoot off his hand, that’s the worst part of the movie for me
• Titanium laminated with kevlar
• Those giant lady glasses are so ’80s
• First time we see RoboCop is on a screen
• The way the whole police station immediately stills when RoboCop walks in
• “Tastes like baby food!” “Knock yourself out.”
• Robo doing the gun twirl and Lewis catching it
• And when the RoboCop theme kicks in while he’s driving… chills!
• RoboCop’s huge shadow on the building
• The hostage taker negotiating about cruise control
• “Pakistan is threatening my border!”
• All the people rushing out the bathroom is pretty funny
• Robocop dreaming is played up well as a major moment
• Do you think the OCP scientists could have come up with a less dangerous method of computer interface than a huge metal spike?
• Magnetic palms mean you never lose your car keys.
• “Ooh guns! Guns! Guns!”
• Didn’t think there’d be a dinosaur in this movie, did ya?

• The importance of not crashing into toxic waste.
• The future has the worlds coolest car alarms and board games.
• The computer that Robocop looks up criminal records on is actually a Northern Telecom telephone switch.
• The point-of-view shots from Robocop include references to MS-DOS.
• The entrance to the OCP building in the movie is actually the front entrance of Dallas City Hall with extensive matte work above to make the building appear to be a giant skyscraper.
• The “Cobra Assault Cannons” are working Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles with some plastic molding added to the frame.
• The ED-209 growls like a jaguar and squeals like a pig.
• Giant vat of instantly mutating toxic waste, every factory has one of those
• The sound of Bob Morton’s doorbell is the same as the one in the writer’s house in A Clockwork Orange.
• The Hubcap flying off the car during the chase scene near the end of the movie was accidental. [thanks Robert H.]
• At the dance club where Robocop arrested Leon Nash, the scene immediately after Leon kicks Robocop in his … Robohood, the wacko going crazy looking at the camera is director Paul Verhoeven [thanks Robert H.]
• “Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.”
• “Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law.”
• Finally taking off the helmet
• Clarence blowing up his minion’s car with an assault cannon: “I LIKE IT!”