Very Cool!!!

How sad is this?

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In the not too distant future, a Detroit police officer is gunned down by a gang of killers and is resurrected as a cyborg police officer. He later regains his humanity and craves vengeance for the gang that killed him. Robocop is sci-fi satire at its finest. It uses the action genre as a guise for deep social commentary on institutional power, media manipulation and consumerism. One of the most memorable lines from the film is 'I'll buy that for a dollar!' said by a character from a sitcom which satirises consumerist excess. We aren't given much context about the show except that everyone finds it utterly hilarious. Even the yuppy like executives, that the show openly makes fun of, embrace this cultural phenomena by referencing the line. This pretty much sums up Robocop's message in a nutshell. The film is directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier. Verhoeven is known for putting over exaggerated violence, sex, swearing and drugs throughout his films and Robocop is no exception. Most of the violence, except Alex Murphy's execution, is overly comical and this was done for a purpose. We laugh at the corporate climate, especially when an executive is blown to bits by a droid and is only labelled as 'a glitch'. The action in the movie is overly stylised to showcase the silly media driven and consumerist world. Even though Robocop is humorous this is not to say the film hasn't got heavy moments of drama and tragedy. Alex Murphy is like a cog in the machine, which is similarly explored in another Verhoeven film, 'Starship Troopers'. We see him trying to imitate a popular tv show 'TJ Laser' which encourages him to join the police force. Although this results in his death and you end up feeling sorry for the character despite his naivety. However, Alex Murphy ends up regaining his humanity which brings some hope in an otherwise pessimistic view of the future.Robocop is fantastic and is one of the smartest eighties sci-fi action films.

Let's be clear. RoboCop ain't Citizen Kane but that's not what it is supposed to be, it's just a crazy fun, over the top sci-fi action flick. Peter Weller is great as RoboCop, the rest of the cast is also great (his female partner, the scumbag at Omni-Corp as well as his boss the even bigger scumbag, the gangster played by the dad from That 70's Show, even the stop motion robot RoboCop has to fight against.One thing I wasn't expecting was how funny the movie would be. There's a lot of great little satirical skits and jokes. Much of the comedy is very dark but still funny.Be advised this movie was originally X-rated for a reason. A lot of the action is way out there with significant blood and gore factor with body parts blown off, screaming and even a melting or two. Do not let kids watch this movie.

What was remarkable about this film, is that it was one of the very last times we had ever seen Ray Harryhausen style stop motion animation used in a feature film. The odd look was because they had to use Rear Projection. This film reflects all of the glory of 70's and 80's practical special effects. Everything we see here is on camera. The Computer displays were all done on Amiga.The ED-209 appears to utilize the top half of a Sennheiser Microphone as a "Radiator Grill", I'd recognize the shape anywhere. Phil Tippet's animation is ingenious, giving unwarranted life to the 209's.What makes this film are the small details, "I'll buy that for a Dollar" (Originally from "The Marching Morons" by CM Kornbluth, which was later the basis for "Idiocracy"), the little News clips, the phoney ads what are not too far fetched. These little bits were used well in the 22-episode TV RoboCop TV show from 1994.And Rob Bottin's brilliant design of the RoboCop "suit". As far as the actors, I didn't know who Peter Weller was. But he was perfect for the role. There is a "good" buisinessman, Miguel Ferrer, contrasted with the Bad Guy Ronny Cox, who Verhoeven also used in Total Recall. Kurtwood Smith and Ray Wise, who always show up in Star Trek things, were over the top crooks. The Kid who drives the van, played by Paul McCrane, was the guy in the X-Files that could walk away after a head-ectomy. In this film, the Old Man of Omni Consumer Products, played by Dan O'Herlihy is a lot more like the kindly old man who owns a company, this changes in the under rated Robocop 2, in which Irvin Kirschner does a good job of imitating Verhoeven's directorial style.Overall, this one film served as a Template that was used in 2 sequels, 2 TV Shows, and one TV Mini Series of various quality. It's great to revisit these, it shows a wholly different way of doing things than what is used today. Also, anachronisms. Many of the things we see in these films, even though they are depicting the future, don't really exist anymore. Cameras that use Film. Computers that use Disks, and even today, Optical disks are not used much, it's all flash drives and SDcards. Telephones. Even Pay Phones, when was the last time you saw a Pay Phone on a street corner? And cars: The huge 6000 SUX, an over the top parody of so many huge Ford cars in the 80's. And we don't even see many of those cars anymore, everything is an SUV now. In some ways, the world was a much simpler place, even in the movies from that time.

Movie Review: "RoboCop" (1987)Due to its technical flawlessness and Paul Verhoeven's daring satiric-infused direction, "RoboCop" becomes easily one of the TOP 3 action movies of 1980s with "Predator" (1987) and "Aliens" (1986) in mind. The movie finds the tone, the pace, the ultra-violence - physically as psychologically - of a society on the brick of civil war. Character Alex Murphy, performed by life-changing emotionally-rolling actor Peter Weller, becomes the tragic hero in this environment of a near urban future under full surveillance and executive control with war machines to serve and protect. Nevertheless Paul Verhoeven never loses sight of the remaining glimpse of compassion / empathy after Murphy becomes RoboCop to full-accelerated gun violence action scenes, which stand on the highest quality levels in the history of cinema.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)