RoboCop
Wiki Article
Officer Murphy (Peter Weller) has just been assigned to the worst precinct in the city. While on patrol, he and his new partner, Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen), react to a report that leads to a fight with Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his gang, arguably Detroit's most dangerous gangsters. Murphy is confronted and shot killed by Boddicker's men in an abandoned warehouse.
Is Robocop actually a machine, or will his "human" history haunt him?
Robocop is an amazing blend of science fiction and action, with many of memorable sequences. The opening confrontation between Murphy and Boddicker's group is brutal as hell (Boddicker blasts Murphy's hand off with a shotgun), and Verhoeven gives us every bloody detail (in the uncut version, anyway). Another violent scene takes place in the Omni Corporation's board room, where Dick Jones is demonstrating his own pet project, the ED-209, a massive robot with a powerful armament. Unfortunately, the ED-209 has a few problems that need to be worked out, as Kinney (Kevin Page), the young executive who volunteered to be a test subject, discovers when it blasts him away!
Despite the excitement, there's more to Robocop than gunfights. In one of the film's most spectacular scenes, we watch the “creation” of Robocop (those moments when, early in the transformation process, he regains consciousness). From a table in the Omni labs, we see snatches of what happens; Robocop wakes up as the technicians and medical professionals celebrate the New Year.
So if you like movies that have a message, you're sure to find something you like in Robocop.
It doesn't matter if you do or don't. You can just sit back and enjoy the carnage!
In the movie "RoboCop" there is a scene early on when a robot goes crazy. It has been set up to tell a criminal to drop his gun, then shoot him if he doesn't. The robot, which is ugly and unwieldy, is wheeled into a board meeting of the company that wants to sell it for a lot of money. A junior executive is chosen to pull a gun on the machine, and he or she does. Warned: The exec lets go of his gun and puts it away. The robot repeats the warning, counts to five, and shoots the guy dead, then it dies too,
The sequence catches us off guard since it occurs in the middle of a film that seemed to be evolving into a serious thriller. One of the finest characteristics of "RoboCop" is that we're no longer sure where it's heading.
A young scientist believes he has discovered a better method to create a police officer by fusing robots and the brain of a person. His opportunity comes when a brave officer (Peter Weller) is murdered in the line of duty. Not quite dead, but not quite alive either, either. The first "robocop" is built around a human core, a half-man, half-machine that functions with faultless logic save for the shreds of human spontaneity and intuition that may be hiding somewhere in the backdrop of its memory.
The narrative follows more or less traditional thriller lines in its basic concept. This isn't your typical thriller, however. Paul Verhoeven, the talented Dutch filmmaker behind "Soldier of Orange" and "The Fourth Man." is in charge of the direction. His films defy easy classification. This film has comedic elements, including slapstick. There is a romantic element present. There is some philosophy here, centered on the topic of what a man is. There's also some sharp social satire, as the robocop adopts some of Bernhard Goetz's characteristics as well as part of his fan base.
It's not uncommon for thriller and special-effects movies to come straight out of the factory. In most cases, you'll be right on the money when you predict future events. "RoboCop" is a suspenseful movie that does things a little differently.
The box office
For the first time, 1987 broke the $1.58 billion record established in 1984, thanks to greater ticket prices and an additional week of theatrical summer. Aside from Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the summer of 1987 had just one blockbuster: Beverly Hills Cop II. A total of 274 million dollars was earned, a 50% increase over 1986, despite the success of additional films, including Robocop. In comparison to 1986, teen-friendly films like RoboCop and Beverly Hills Cop II performed 22% worse. Adult-targeted films enjoyed a 39% revenue boost. RoboCop was a summer surprise hit for Orion.
Having a critical response
Variety's review highlighted Nancy Allen for providing the only human warmth in RoboCop.
Many reviewers talked about how violent the movie was. Ebert and the Los Angeles Times thought the violence was so much that it was intentionally funny. Ebert said that ED-209 killing an executive shattered people's expectations of a science-fiction movie that seemed to be serious and straightforward. The Los Angeles Times thought that the violent scenes were able to make people both sad and moved at the same time, which was a good thing. People who didn't like RoboCop, like Kehr and Walter Goodman, thought the movie's satire and critiques of corporate corruption were just an excuse to show violent images. They thought the violence had a "brooding, agonized quality ... as if Verhoeven were both appalled and fascinated" by it. The Christian Science Monitor said that critical praise for the "nasty" film was a sign that people were more concerned with "style over substance"
Read more info: Decker Shado @ Riffs and Reviews // The Movie Database Report this wiki page