In a near-future America, the crime-ridden city of (Old) Detroit symbolizes the decline of the urban industrial center, and a fascist corporation called Omni Consumer Products (OCP) stands to benefit. The only thing standing between it and its vision of a utopian “Delta City” is the city’s skyrocketing crime rate. Rival executives — played by Miguel Ferrer and Ronny Cox, respectively — compete to determine who can better militarize the local police force into crime-busting automatons. One solution, the fully robotic ED-209, goes apeshit during its first demo and kills a junior executive. The better bet might be the “RoboCop” program, which combines human organs and the magic of science to produce a more reasonable crime fighting cyborg.
When precinct transfer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is shot to death while pursuing a gang of bank robbers led by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), his body is donated to the OCP program, and the RoboCop prototype goes operational. His brain is wiped of memory as easily as a discarded hard drive, and his former partner Lewis (Nancy Allen) is totally foreign to him as a result. He operates with cool and monotone efficiency under four distinct directives: serve the public trust; protect the innocent; uphold the law; and SSSSSHHHHH IT’S A SECRET.
It’s difficult to sit through the bloodshed and shredded metal of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 action opus without thinking to oneself, “how come RoboCop never gets shot in the lower half of his face?” Statistically speaking, it just seems unlikely. For any scholar of ROBOCOP, the prevailing (Internet) wisdom that THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS (1998) contains the most bullets fired in an American film is dubious, at best. Excessive firepower aside, this remains one of the great achievements in 1980s action filmmaking, with biting satire to match its visual bombast.
ROBOCOP (1987) Dir. Paul Verhoeven, 102 minutes
Friday 5/16, Saturday 5/17, & Sunday 5/18, 10:00PM
The Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle St.
Cambridge MA 02138
$10.00