If this movie wasn't so famous, and I hadn't already seen or heard of it, I'd go in with very low expectations. I mean, come on - "RoboCop"? Need I remind you of 'WolfCop'? But in a somewhat 'Starship Troopers' kind of a way, 'RoboCop' manages to both be silly-fun and draw a couple parrallels with the world we live in, and what it's turning into. All while driping in ultra-violence and sex and drugs and all that cool stuff.
And it got a lot right. Since then mega corporations are even more of a thing, privatisation seems to be sneaking into everything, and we take the militarization of the police pretty much for granted.
The other thing I really like about this movie is how it doesn't try too hard to build up our protagonists' back story. We get a couple short visuals of his wife and kid and we see him be sad about it but we don't spend too long on it and we never have to meet them, thank god. The violence is also really intense at times, and I like the effects (that bit where the guy drove into chemical waste, walked out all melty, was hit by a car and exploded like a water balloon was particularly, uh, memorable).
Not only were the characters tollerable, I actually liked them. Particularly the boardroom scenes, which I found a lot of fun. Not all the suits were completely evil, and there was a nice range of dark greys all throughout the movie. I liked the variation of antagonists, from the execs to the gang to the ED-209. The practical effects were excellent, by the way. The slightly jerky stop-motion worked for the 209, and a the makeup on RoboCop himself looked pretty great. His suit? The most expensive single part of the movie, I hear. Completely custom built, with that robotic gun holster really working.
An apparently dumb flashy action thriller that has a little more under the hood while still delivering the simple fun of watching people shoot the crap out of one another, 'RoboCop' is a good watch for just about anyone.
An apparently dumb flashy action thriller that has a little more under the hood while still delivering the simple fun of watching people shoot the crap out of one another, 'RoboCop' is a good watch for just about anyone.
RoboCop: 82.0