In Hollywood, no good film goes unpunished. This year we’ve had pointless, mediocre remakes of The Karate Kid, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Wolfman, and many more. This week alone sees Paranormal Activity 2 and, heaven help us, the 7th sequel to a great little horror film you may have seen, Saw. And so it is that Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi masterpiece, Robocop, begat Robocop 2 and 3, and now MGM brings us the Robocop Trilogy on Blu-ray.
The original Robocop is still the super violent sci-fi thriller you remember, but the film is also something more: an eerily prescient reflection of our perma-war military-industrial complex. Of all of the sci-fi dystopias to grace American theaters, Robocop may describe our place in history better than any other.
For the fifteen of you out there who don’t know, Robocop takes place in the near future, in a crime-ridden pseudo-apocalyptic Detroit, where the police force has been privatized by Omni Consumer Products. OCP wants to turn “old Detroit” into a consumerist utopia, “Delta City”, but in order to do so, they need to wipe the streets free of crime, and for that, they’re gonna need a special kind of policing. So when policeman Alexander Murphy (Weller) dies on the job, they transplant what’s left of him into a cyborg body and boom, Robocop is born.
Murphy/Ropocop spends much of the movie hunting down the men who killed him, a gang led by cocaine dealing mastermind Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith). Smith’s performance as the unhinged, slimy Boddicker is one of the great turns in action-movie history. And this film has action, buckets of bloody, awesome action.
The compelling storytelling and gruesome violence made it a hit, but the vision of American dystopia makes it a classic. Robocop is designed by OCP as a spec product to eventually sell to the military: the US is fighting an ongoing war in Mexico with OCP providing the weapons and the men. All of this is reported on by an upbeat, 24 hour sound-bite driven news media. The prevalence of computer and television screens, the privatization (and collapse) of public infrastructure, and the way citizen-consumers are caught in the crossfire reflect 2010 much more than 1987, the year of Robocop’s release.
If Robocop is a powerful anti-capitalist allegory with hyper violence, Robocop 2 is a Reaganite Just-Say-No afterschool special, with hyper violence. In 2, Robocop returns to battle a designer drug called Nuke, which is ripping Detroit apart. Nuke is produced by a “drug cult”, led by lazy-eyed self-made prophet Cain, who believes Nuke will bring about Nirvana.
In response to Nuke, a feminist psychotherapist higher-up in OCP, Dr. Faxx, reprograms Robocop into some kind of PC permissive 90s dad (it’s as weird as it sounds), so he has to electrocute himself to reboot (adults made this movie) and go full Dirty Harry to beat Cain. Later, Dr. Faxx turns Cain into Robocop 2 (please don’t ask) and they do cheesy, badly animated battle for pretty much the full second hour of the film.
This movie’s a mess: there are a number of plot lines which go no where, weird out of place comedic scenes, and a virulent right-wing viewpoint. The action is still well done, and it has some so-bad-its-good-charm, particularly in Cain’s thirteen year old right hand man (his last words: “I’m going to die. You know what it’s like, don’t you? It really sucks.”)
But the film is offensive, boring, and way way too long. The mayor, a mincing black man in a suit two sizes two large, would make Margaret Mitchell blush, Robocop’s emotional struggles are completely ridiculous, and the plot makes less and less sense as the film chugs along. Yikes.
Robocop 3, on the other hand, is a charming little action film that totally surprised me. In it, OCP has been purchased by Japanese Kanemitsu enterprises, and they’ve hired a paramilitary force, REHAB, to evict residents of the Cadillac Heights neighborhood and finally build Delta City. A rag-tag group of homeowners start a resistance movement and battles with REHAB to save their neighborhood. Guess which side Robocop ends up on?
Campy and ridiculous, it actually has the snappiest dialogue of the three films (example: “Where the hell is Robocop?” “We could drive around listening for explosions”), well-developed characters, and some genuinely emotional scenes. Maybe it was just Stockholm Syndrome from a six hour Robocop marathon, but I actually teared up during this one.
There’s a little girl with a tiny laptop that she uses to hack robots, a gang of mohawked ruffians called the Splatter Punks, and, oh yeah, a ninja robot assassin sent by Kanemitsu to kill Robocop. Did I mention that Robocop gets an attachable flamethrower arm and a jet pack? Robocop gets an attachable flamethrower arm and a jet pack. It’s a silly movie, and totally weird, but it’s Robocop 3! I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Calling this “The Robocop Trilogy” is a little disingenuous. This is one great movie, and two weird sequels. At the price, I’d recommend you just buy the first one alone: you’ll watch Robocop 3 once and forget about it, and Robocop 2’s only good as a coaster. But if you’re a purist, a fanboy, or perhaps a masochist (I definitely don’t recommend watching these all back to back to back), go for it.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Umm…theatrical trailers. And these movies were definitely imported straight from DVD, the visual quality is nothing special.
"Robocop Trilogy" is on sale October 5, 2010 and is rated R. Sci-Fi. Directed by Fred Dekker, Irvin Kershner, Paul Verhoeven. Written by Edward Neumeier, Frank Miller, Walon Green, Fred Dekker. Starring Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, Nancy Allen, Peter Weller, Rip Torn, Ronny Cox.
