The Robocop franchise always leaned in the direction of hyper violent, tongue-in-cheek action and with Paul Verhoeven’s original there was at least a deeper story about humanity to be explored. Robocop 2 makes fleeting advances at deeper messages about what it means to be human, but in the end Irvin Kershner’s sequel plays more like a comedy than it does a compelling action film despite the fact that he ramped up the elements of the latter genre. Had Kershner dialed back the comedy and given more time to the duality of Robocop as both a tool of law enforcement and the remnant of a human being, Robocop 2 could have stayed equaled the first as an overall film. Though it might not be as rounded, it’s still plenty of fun to watch.
The opening minutes of the film show us exactly what the film should have been, with criminals robbing a firearm store and then unloading round after round into an oncoming cop car. Nothing could have survived that, they surmise only to watch, seconds later, as Robocop emerges from the wreckage and lays waste to them. Had the film devoted itself to showing Robocop having fully embraced his role and optimized his ability to perform it, they still could have worked in the upgrade storyline that sees the private firm that created Robocop attempting to develop more advanced forms but failing for want of similar test subjects. This plot takes place alongside one of a shady corporate plan to induce a strike in law enforcement during a spike in crime due to the rise of a designer street drug, but it’s executed at a painfully silly level, with blundering board room scenes which safely shake the film from its sublime and well conceived dystopian reverie and awakens it to the cold hard reality where the film is actually a bloated action flick that constantly forgets where it came from.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
There are none.
"Robocop 2" is on sale September 13, 2011 and is rated R. Action, Crime. Directed by Irvin Kershner. Written by Frank Miller & Walon Green. Starring Nancy Allen, Peter Weller, Tom Noonan.
