Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith
Have I Seen It Before?: There’s something fascinating about the image of Robocop, as exemplified in the poster above. It enflamed the imagination of this reviewer as a child (and I’m willing to hazard a guess that I wasn’t the only one). Whenever it would air on network TV, it was appointment viewing. By the time I could procure R-rated films (and it is one of the R-iest R-rated films to come down the pike), it was one of the first I got my hands on.
Did I like it?: And it didn’t disappoint. In truth, the reality is that this film makes me angry. There’s a point about three-fourths through the film where I become pointedly depressed that in my own efforts, I’m never going to make anything as good as this. This film is so good that I have infinite patience for anything with the Robocop name on it, even when that patience is continuously tested by an endless series of lame attempts (that steadfastly avoid any understanding of what makes this film so special) to recapture the glory displayed here.
It is equal parts biting satire (that has become increasingly true), and pure Campbellian hero myth. It’s a silly title, but for my money, it’s a perfect movie.
And, yet… Now we live in an era where it is difficult to look at a cop in a film as a hero, much less a tragic one. It’s also an action movie from the 1980s; you can play any random thirty seconds and find a handful of problematic things. Take his prime directives, an attempt at a heroic code:
1. Serve the Public Trust
2. Protect the Innocent
3. Uphold the Law
4. (CLASSIFIED) Any attempt to arrest an officer of Omni Consumer Products results in shutdown.
The fourth directive is clearly the main fuel of stories involving the characters, but when you dig into it further, his very design is fascist. Everyone is theoretically innocent until proven guilty, but Robocop (Weller) has no problem eviscerating (and castrating) piles of crooks long before they’ve been able to see an attorney. With a logical flaw in his overriding programming, it’s a wonder Robo didn’t join the HAL 9000 in trying to obliterate every full-human being in sight just to make logical sense of the world.
There may be good cops, but the system is not interested in letting them stay good. That the slightest wisps of a human being encased in military hardware can still reach for their own humanity, maybe there is some hope. It is, after all, a fantasy.