Robocop

Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987) is a decent action film, and its full of good ol' Verhoeven excess and critique of American capitalism, but any consideration of it being a classic of its genre is predicated largely on its introduction of explicit gore into American households (squib packs, gore galore, et ceterea). In terms of cultural critique, though, Showgirls shows up this film any day of the week. Whereas that film allows several of its characters to rise beyond blatant stereotype, here there's not a single character who seems to exist independently of what they're called to do in the script.

As such, most of the critique on American capitalism is wedged into the outer edges of the narrative. The sections with the newscasters cheerfully reading off the day's news, even with polite repartee despite the wanton chaos and catastrophes going on around them, possess the trademark satire expected from Verhoeven. Moreover, the ads that intercut the news broadcasts exists as even stronger critique, with toys that market global destruction and chaos, extending the old Battleship ideas into a nuclear holocaust scenario and perfectly undercutting the naïve delivery behind corporate attitudes of news as it's presented on newscasts. That said, since it's more tangential and world-building than integral to the plot, one cannot privilege or elevate the material simply because of this point.

It's really the blandness of the two principle characters, Murphy (later the “completely” mechanical robot of police enforcement, Robocop) and the female cop Lewis, that lessens the film's impact. Both Murphy and Lewis are largely uninvolving characters, which damages our core sympathies. While this very detail precisely underscores Verhoeven's intent of offering a human but dehumanized world of the 80’s, it’s just dramatically underwhelming. The corporate climber who creates Robocop exists as a wonderful debasement of 80's excess culture, doing anything and utilizing every little edge he can to get ahead in the corporate world. But then he is killed off, and so ends that satire.

In order to work more fully, the film needs a bit more articulation of the inner drama as Murphy realizes that his return to life means that his personal life is devoid of meaning since his wife has moved on. This doesn't demand a complete shift from machine to human concepts of emotion, but a bit more interplay would have been fascinating. We get a bit of this during Lewis' caring for Murphy at the factory, but the plot and its predications hinder some of the explored characteristics that could have been vital to fleshing the two out more. Perhaps Verhoeven wants to subvert the notion that all action heroes need a woman as love interest and that's why the film underplays these ideas. But given the rest of the film's focus on excess, I find myself a bit unconvinced of the relationships these two hold for one another.

The oily corporate climber and Boddicker were the two most interesting characters, and so I find myself a bit depressed when the former bites it relatively early and the latter isn't involved in the final countdown. That said, the finale is rather clever, articulating an endpoint out of Murphy's former inability to harm the higher-ups at the corporation. I like that, but the last lines felt a bit too comic-booky in their wrap-up, as opposed to the exaggerated realism of the rest of the film. Taking it as a comic-book type of film, one can overlook some of the lack of character dynamics since they do fit comfortably into the archetypes of heroes and the individual's quest. Yet the films asks in the beginning to be read as exaggerated realism and not lightweight fantasy despite the premise, so its final tone feels off and thus dehabilitating...

Robocop: 7/10