Disliking RoboCop

Wiki Article

Omni Consumer Products, an evil business, receives a contract from the municipal government to privatize the police department in a near-apocalyptic Detroit. With Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) leading the charge against criminal boss Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), the firm uses Murphy's corpse to test its untested RoboCop prototype, which is still in development. After discovering the company's sinister objectives, RoboCop decides to turn against them.

There are a lot of criminals living in Detroit in the near future. The police force, which was bought by the Omni Corporation after the city went bankrupt, tries to keep the peace. This is what they do. That is not true anymore. Thugs and thieves have taken over the streets. They also kill people and rape women.

The city's poorest precinct has just gotten Officer Murphy (Peter Weller). On patrol, Harry and his new partner, Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen), encounter Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his gang, arguably Detroit's most dangerous gangsters. Boddicker's men corner and shoot Murphy in an abandoned warehouse.

When Robocop strikes the streets, particularly against Boddicker and his pals, the action heats up. A gas station worker is threatened with an automatic rifle by one of Boddicker's men on Robocop's first night out. This showdown not only provides great action, but it also brings back memories for Robocop, who recognizes Emil as one of Murphy's murderers.

It doesn't matter how good the action is in Robocop. There is a lot more to the movie than just shoot-outs and showdowns. In one of the most impressive parts of the movie, we see Robocop being made from scratch, from his point of view (those moments when, early in the transformation process, he regains consciousness). They strap Robocop to a table in Omni labs, and we only see a few brief glimpses of most of what happens. When Robocop wakes up, the technicians and medical people are celebrating the New Year.

In the beginning of "RoboCop" a robot goes berserk. It's been designed to tell a criminal to put down his pistol and then kill him if he doesn't. The robot is wheeled into a board meeting of the firm that wants to earn millions by selling it. A junior executive is picked to operate the machine with a gun. A warning has been given. The executive puts down his weapon. The robot issues a second warning, counts to five, and then shoots the man.

People are having a good time in this funny scene. Whether it was even funnier before the MPAA Code and Ratings Administration asked for cuts in it isn't really a big deal, I guess. It is funny in the same way that the assembly line in Chaplin's "Modern Times" is funny. There is something funny about logic being used in a situation where it isn't needed.

He does a remarkable job of building empathy for his character, while spending much of the film disguised beneath some form of makeup gadget or another. This character is more "human," in the movie's second half, as opposed to the first. His story is compelling, and Nancy Allen does an excellent job as his tenacious companion wanting to find out what happened to him in the first place.

Most thriller and special-effects movies come right off the assembly line. You can call out every development in advance, and usually be right. "RoboCop" is a thriller with a difference.

Response to the Situation

Aliens (1986), The Terminator (1984), and the stories of Frankenstein (1931), Repo Man (1984), and Miami Vice were all influenced by the movie. As Blade Runner had done for Los Angeles, RoboCop built a unique, futuristic picture of Detroit. Multiple critics had a hard time figuring out what kind of movie this was. They said it had elements of action, science fiction, thrillers, Westerns, slapstick comedy, romance, snuff films, superhero comics, and camp, but not all of them.

A lot of publications thought Verhoeven's direction was smart and darkly funny, with sharp social satire that, the Washington Post said, would have been just a simple action movie if it had been directed by someone else. Many other people thought the movie was too directed, with Verhoeven's European filmmaking style lacking rhythm, tension, and momentum. Dave Kehr and the Chicago Reader were two of them. This is what the Chicago Reader said about Verhoeven's ability to show the "sleazily psychological" through physicality: RoboCop's "Aryan blandness" didn't work well for him. The Washington Post and Roger Ebert both said that Weller did a good job and that he was able to make people feel bad and show chivalry while wearing a big costume. The Washington Post said that Weller had a kind of beauty and grace that made him a myth and made his death even worse. Weller, on the other hand, didn't even show up for the Chicago Reader when he put on the mask. Variety said that Nancy Allen was the only person who was kind in the movie, and Kurtwood Smith was a well-cast "sicko sadist"

The film's violent nature was brought up by several reviews. For Ebert and the Los Angeles Times, the violence was so severe that it became intentionally humorous, with Ebert saying that ED-209 murdering a CEO defied viewer expectations of a supposedly serious and simple science-fiction picture. The violent moments, according to the Los Angeles Times, were successful in evoking both sadism and poignancy. Others, like as Kehr and Walter Goodman, were harsher, believing that RoboCop's satire and criticisms of corporate corruption were justifications for using violent imagery. The violence had a "brooding, agonized quality ... as if Verhoeven were both appalled and fascinated" by it, according to The Chicago Reader, while critical acclaim for the "nasty" picture showed a preference for "style over substance" according to The Christian Science Monitor.

The film's most successful effort, according to Kehr and The Washington Post, was its satire of corporations and the interchangeable use of corporate executives and street-level criminals to depict their unchecked greed and callous disregard alongside witty criticisms of subjects such as game shows and military culture. Reaction to the film has been positive, with the Los Angeles Times saying that the standard cliché vengeance scenario is changed by making the protagonist a machine that continues falling to humanity, passion, and idealism, which some critics found refreshing. The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer said RoboCop's triumph was gratifying because it provided a story about a virtuous guy battling back against corruption, evil, and the stealing of his humanity with morality and technology on his side. According to the Washington Post, "the film's" "With all our flesh-and-blood heroes failing us—from brokers to baseball players—we need a man of mettle, a real straight shooter who doesn't fool around with Phi Beta Kappas and never puts anything up his nose." RoboCop is what the world needs."

References: riffsandreviews.blogspot.com, www.themoviedb.org