RoboCop (1987)
The future of law enforcement.
Remember that one time I did a whole lot of reboot movies as a temporary review theme? Here’s another one that I never did the original one for despite having watched it numerous times. Yeah, sure, we could be doing literally any movie this week - but I’ve been playing a lot of a certain game that involves big armored dudes killing bad guys with fancy guns, so I feel like it’s pretty fitting on top of that. Get ready for some 80’s ultra-violence that somehow spawned an entire line of toys and cartoons, the police have an upgrade and it’s name is RoboCop.
You can’t have crap in future Detroit. The cops are owned by a corporation and getting forced to spread themselves super thin in dangerous situations, and it’s getting them tore up. The corpo’s are out there just looking to make money - be it by selling a military hardware tank-with-legs robot as a “24/7 cop” or by cleaning out the entire area to turn into a paradise so their profits can increase. When the tank-cop doesn’t go as planned and ends up wasting on of the coworkers, the company decides to go with a backup plan - a more man like robot, and it shall be called RoboCop. The only problem is that they need a volunteer - lucky for them a good office who just got transfered in just got volunteered in pieces. Will Robo be able clean up the streets and get to the bottom of things?
The movie is a bit over the top often - but the actors do a pretty good job in all honesty. I mean, don’t get me wrong it’s totally dialed up to 11 most the time, but for everything that’s going on it generally always feels like it belongs in this wild violent setting. When he transitions from normal cop to Robo, our lead gets to do a dramatic shift in pretty much every aspect of his deliveries, becoming both more subdued and stiff in movement, but also still somehow doing a wonderful job of bringing some fine little details to the role that you might not have gotten else-wise. The corporate folks all have a certain level of sleeze and slime to them that makes them feel just as much like a villain as the more ruthless baddies, and in both regards the actors deliver exactly the kind of attitude you would expect from the character in the situation. Yes, they get hammy sometimes - like every “I’d buy that for a dollar” commercial, but it never feels like it isn’t fitting. Heck, even some of the one off side-characters have just perfect reactions. Like, it’s a bizarre situation where you can see where people wouldn’t be super impressed with the acting jobs, and yet at the same time you get all these little details with how someone reacts to Robo - like when he saves a woman from a couple of creeps and she eventually backs away slightly confused and upset when she gets nothing but a very computer-like reaction to her emotional response to be saved.
When it comes to characters, it’s largely about Robo eventually learning of and coming to terms with his situation and the loss of his past that comes with it. Beyond that, I wouldn’t say there is a ton of characters getting a lot of development. There’s a lot of interactions going on though - we’ve got the corpo goons jockeying for position amongst each other, we’ve got the crooks doing crook like things - but for the most part the most in-depth you’ll get is between Robo and his partner, or the goons having peeing contests with each other. Much like the acting and movie in general, even as a stereotypical line of character can end up dialing up to 11 - pretty well best exemplified by the corporate goons more than even the villains to be honest. You’ll find the characters to be much more evened out in the line of levels good and bad then you will the acting, but it does at least try and do something with the plight of RoboCop - and honestly I feel it’s the biggest thing that sets it apart from it’s reboot. The reboot was far more about making the human level on the surface side, whereas this one was much more about regaining that humanity. Minor stuff perhaps, but there nonetheless.
Someone about to have a bad day.
The semi-future of the 80’s setting gives it plenty of room to play with things like ridiculous guns, wild costumes, and a nice jarring switch between upper posh and slummy industrial and crime ridden. Although a lot of what you see is still somewhat normal everyday wear, between the cop uniforms and Robo himself there is a good amount of variety here. It’s easy enough to tell apart whose who, even in the largely suit-wearing corporate side. The setting itself does give a range of spots as well, from club to corporate, drug manufacturing dens over to industrial facilities. From how it sounds from behind the scenes stuff, the Robo costume was rather rough to wear, and his restricted movements is in part thanks to that. Some of the settings actually delve into the effects category, with at least a few exterior mat shots going in there - but nothing ever really doesn’t look like it is capable of existing in the setting.
Of course, that ties into our favorite part of movies, the effects department. It’s admittedly somewhat a mixed bag thanks to it’s age. Old ED-209, for example, doesn’t look bad as a model, but it’s stop motion stands out pretty good in comparison to a lot of the other effects. Likewise with a few of the mat paintings. All that being told, it does still largely look good. Explosions are on point, gunfire seems meaty enough with plenty of over dramatic muzzle flash, and of course we have tons of classic squib shots going on. The main thing to net this bad boy it’s R rating is definately the violence - and it is absolutely hyped up to 12. When the opening of your movie involves a dude getting shot like 20 times after having his hand removed via shotgun, it’s certainly not one for the kids - and yet oddly, we got plenty of kid-marketed stuff out of this. The 80’s were a heck of a time man.
Audio is good, and it’s balanced nicely. The music has some iconic tunes that stick around with me - but in all honesty that’s probably all the nostalgia that keeps it in place more so than anything necessarily being super stand out. Line deliveries are well done, although at times it does get a bit overly dramatic as previously mentioned. Beyond all of that you have all sorts of commentary in there. Greed, corporations, corruption, various things about the police force and humanity. Peppered throughout you get shots of some goofy and crude tv show, as well as things like new snippets and the likes. Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and there is quite a bit that hasn’t aged quite as well - like some of the things being said amongst folks being a bit on the unaccepted side for modern times - so it’s not just the hyper violence that would be keeping a younger audience away. The final effects shot is also, just wow. It’s not great at all.
Mysterious RoboCop
There’s a level of nostalgia to the movie that hard-baked some enjoyment into it for me. The look, the feel, the over dramatic parts and all that over the top violence. home slice getting splattered after getting tox waste vatted is probably the prime example of just how over-the-top it can be. The most baffling thing about it is how it ever ended up becoming a thing for kids - not so much on that bottom premise of “robot officer busting crime” - but pretty much every other part of the movie, what with the drugs the violence and the language. I’m still more attached to this than the reboot, even if the reboot is far more streamlined and more primo effects. That said, I do still think they are both fine in their own ways - and me being someone whose pretty hard to offend even the should be offensive parts don’t bug me despite me knowing that not everyone would have the same reaction.