Review: Robocop (1987)

“I’d buy that for a dollar!”

We’ve talked about the first impromptu instalment of Paul Verhoeven’s science fiction trilogy with Total Recall—a film that for me comes very close to epitomizing that which is so cheesy, yet so awesome. But now it’s time to discuss the one that many consider his best—a flick rooted in its era and yet still resonating perhaps even moreso today. It’s this Dutchman’s take on police militarization and corporate politics—that just happens to involve cyborgs and killer robots. 

All silly scifi, some may say, while gluing yourself to electronic devices until they become but extensions of the self, while feeding machine algorithms with your thoughts and being fed by them in turn, while we give technological pioneering and inordinate power to, of all the damn things, a package delivery concern. Not for no reason does the cyberpunk subgenre seem more poignant than it really should now—so without further ado, let’s look how 1987’s Robocop exemplifies that. 

To start with, it’s very obvious this was made in the late Reagan era, where recessions and scandals had eroded the ‘greed is good’ highs of excess earlier in the decade. This is shown off the bat with the satirical TV commercials and reports interspersed throughout, touching on such things like the SDI satellite weapons project and, yes, apartheid. Of course, we hit that deadpan tone just right, and it’s still all kinds of entertaining—Verhoeven was overwhelmed by the absurdity of US television commercialism when first staying there, and channels that into one of the things that the film tackles. 

And of course just to make it more ridiculous they could have paid subscriptions for heated seats and oh wait--

The rest of the premise is simple—Peter Weller plays Alex Jones Murphy, a cop running the worst sides of Detroit (this was made when the urban decay of the seventies and early eighties still rang strong, with crime rife and municipal resources in major cities often underfunded). With his spunky partner Lewis (Nancy Allen), he tries to apprehend a gang lead by one psychotic by the name of Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith)—only to get cornered and executed in a brutal scene that we know for a fact contemporary studios wouldn’t try in a major film as this (more on that later). Turns out, the OCP corporation that is taking over Detroit and its police departments is having some internal competition for the next urban pacification product—and so, young executive Bob (Miguel Ferrer) decides to have what’s left of Murphy’s body used as the ultimate policing cyborg. 

It’s the rivalry between Bob and older corpo Dick (Ronny Cox) that provides some of the best moments in the film—starting out with the infamous boardroom sequence that proves a masterpiece of black comedy. We get introduced to Dick’s own product, the ED-209—one of the most magnificent mechatronic monstrosities put to film. And, of course, it turns out to be a barely functional piece of crap. We don’t ask why it’s fully loaded here with .50 cal rounds, when it ends up perforating one of the executives—and just to put the cherry on top, the whole ‘mishap’ is treated like a case of spilt coffee. OCP’s chief executive, played by Daniel O’Herlihy, plays his reaction so well just to add to the twisted hilarity. 

It's like staring into Dick Cheney's psyche.

Of course, here we start getting into one of the ways the film proves uncomfortably prophetic, with the ED intended as a surplus military product to dump on police departments—it’s of course inconceivable that overengineered war machines designed maybe for pacifying Iraqi insurgents would be happily snapped up for community policing, right…? 

And that of course ties into Murphy’s story arc, which is the real meat of things. For all of his over-the-top dispatching of thugs and punks, it’s made clear that ultimately Robocop is just another thing OCP is trying to sell, with Murphy’s brain just serving as the CPU for a metal body. And, between the violence and satire, that’s what leads into one of the genuinely poignant and heart wrenching moments as Murphy, still feeling those memories and sensations from his former life, stumbles into his long-abandoned family home, to find there’s nothing there. In an age of people glued and connected to digital machinery, often in the name of draconian contract…there’s more than one level this resonates on. 

Verhoeven mumbles something Jesus allegories on the DVD commentary, but really, Murphy attempting to rediscover his humanity and free himself from the computer codes and directives wired into his cybernetic skull makes for compelling enough storytelling without that. There were plenty of cyborg and robot-themed films around the eighties, often ripping off Terminator or something else, but it’s that focused personal touch here that makes this one rise above those—and the rest in its series. 

Oh, and of course, there’s no shortage of gloriously entertaining hammy performances and ridiculous action between all of that. That combination of the gleefully over-the-top with the actual impactful works way better than it should, and leaves this film feeling as satisfying as it ever did once we get to that oh so cathartic final scene. 

That wasn’t the end of it, of course. I’ve talked about Robocop 2, which was an inferior sequel, but just about watchable with some moments of its own—its key mistake being disregarding the character moments of the first in favor of more yuks and explosions. Robocop 3 went off the rails with outright silliness involving jetpacks and robot ninjas, and then, believe it or not, there was a Saturday morning cartoon based on the ultraviolent satire. Because this was the eighties. Oh, and after TV spinoffs and more, we had a remake in 2014—which, while not the worst of its ilk I’ve seen, was still a fairly humdrum watered down version of the original, even if it did have one pretty memorable scene of its own. 

Either way, the first film is still great, giant hairdos and slightly jerky stop-motion effects notwithstanding. Next up, we round off Verhoeven’s scifi entries with a slightly more divisive one, but one still almost as entertaining for my money…