{"id":9812,"date":"2010-10-16T20:36:08","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T04:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9812"},"modified":"2010-10-18T06:19:32","modified_gmt":"2010-10-18T14:19:32","slug":"robocop-paul-verhoeven-1987-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9812","title":{"rendered":"Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed on DVD.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like the other reviewers on this site, I was recently asked to put together a list of the best films ever released.\u00a0 You\u2019ll see the results soon, but let me say right now that it was an impossible task.\u00a0 Within moments of writing it I knew I\u2019d made mistakes \u2013 right now I\u2019m realizing that Jean Renoir\u2019s The Grand Illusion is missing, an unforgivable omission \u2013 but it did make me think about the films I love, and one of those is Robocop<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Yes, I forgot a classic that celebrates humanity and condemns national pride, but found space for an overgrown street-mime in a fiberglass armor-suit.\u00a0 Never trust a top-ten list!<\/p>\n

So, what on earth made me think of Paul Verhoeven\u2019s cyberpunk neo-noir when I was putting together my list?\u00a0 On the surface, it sounds like any number of high-concept cyborg films, many of which ended up swelling the straight-to-video ranks in the 1980s.\u00a0 In a future where a giant corporation, Omni Consumer Products, owns the Detroit police department, a mortally wounded cop is resurrected in a new tin skin.\u00a0 Programmed to serve the community, OCP sends him out to rid Detroit of crime, so that it\u2019s dream of a gleaming, futuristic cityscape can be realized on schedule.\u00a0 But the companies corrupt VP has other plans and, in league with old Detroit\u2019s organized crime boss, he schemes to unplug the cop with a heart of chrome.\u00a0 It\u2019s hardly \u2018classic\u2019 material, is it?<\/p>\n

But, like a stage magician, Robocop has a trick or two concealed up its sleeves.\u00a0 In Ronny Cox and Kurtwood Smith it has a superb pair of villains.\u00a0 Cox\u2019s corporate shark schmoozes and sneers, while Smith manages to keep his cop-killer crime boss both smart enough to be believable and psychotic enough to be chilling.\u00a0 Peter Weller in the title role is much more comfortable once he has the shiny helmet on, but once he does, his physical acting creates a truly sympathetic Frankenstein\u2019s monster, and the armor\u2019s heft lends the film a sense of reality that shames any work I\u2019ve seen the CGI wizards accomplish.<\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t to say that the film doesn\u2019t have special effects.\u00a0 Robocop himself, once the Judge Dredd-esque helmet comes off, is a masterpiece of grotesque makeup and prosthetic work.\u00a0 In addition, there is the monstrous ED-209, a gargantuan, lumbering robot that Robocop replaces when it malfunctions.\u00a0 In this pre-CGI-extravaganza era, the work is handled though stop motion animation.\u00a0 Now, that might sound terribly quaint, but the effects are coordinated by Phil Tippit, the man behind the AT-AT troop carriers from The Empire Strikes Back.\u00a0 In his hands the stop motion work isn\u2019t a handicap, it\u2019s an advantage.\u00a0 The artificial edge that it brings adds a clockwork menace to ED-209, something that ties so superbly to its role in the film.\u00a0 And that\u2019s where Robocop truly begins to elevate itself.<\/p>\n

Robocop is an \u2018ideas\u2019 film, wrapped up in an action-film disguise.\u00a0 It\u2019s a cinematic wolf in sci-fi clothing.\u00a0 It raises questions of life and death and satirizes the corporate greed that defined the 80s.\u00a0 It\u2019s packed with TVs playing revolting, misogynistic game shows and soul-sucking adverts which implore you to celebrate your wealth with a gas-guzzling car, or take pleasure in death with a cold-war nuclear Armageddon board game that\u2019s fun for all the family!\u00a0 ED-209, unfeelingly following his flawed logic, embodies senseless bureaucracy at its worst.\u00a0 He\u2019s a speed camera that\u2019s replaced a patrol officer, an unmonitored CCTV camera recording the horror but unable to intervene, and an inflexible three-strikes law, all rolled into one.\u00a0 Robocop wants you to think about the world, but the medicine comes served on a spoonful (or perhaps bucketful would be more appropriate as the film was originally cut to prevent it being slapped with an X rating) of ultra-violence.<\/p>\n

Robocop is certainly a film of its moment.\u00a0 While some themes (environmental destruction, a news channel that promises to tell you all you need to know about the world in three minutes) have perhaps grown in the public conscience since its release, others, like the cold war, have thankfully receded.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t diminish the film\u2019s power.\u00a0 Like James Cameron\u2019s original Terminator, it still stands head and pneumatic shoulders above its many siblings and bastard offspring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed on DVD. Like the other reviewers on this site, I was recently asked to put together a list of the best films ever released.\u00a0 You\u2019ll see the results soon, but let me say right now that it was an impossible task.\u00a0 Within moments of writing it I knew I\u2019d made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}