It's been ages since I watched Robocop and I'm not sure exactly what put me in the mood to look at it again (possibly seeing Peter Weller in Cabinet Of Curiosities). But I was a lot younger when I last looked at it, so this seemed like a good chance to look at it anew.
I think it's aged quite well, given that it's not far from its 40th birthday. To me, this is a film mostly about the characters in it, who are by far the most memorable takeaway. Robocop himself is a complicated character, theoretically supposed to be a cyborg but haunted by memories and eventually clinging on to rather more humanity than intended. Clarence Boddicker is a very memorable villain, not least because his sneering and arrogance sits behind a balding, bespectacled bank manager's face; his gang manages to be repulsive but all of them are quite distinctive and some effort seems to have gone into making them all individuals. The cops are a bit more straightforward - Sgt Reed is a tough superior who you've seen in a lot of films, and Lewis is a tough, incorruptible equivalent to a beat officer in this world. By far the most interesting are the executives of OCP, who are many shades of grey. None of them has a good motive; the Old Man wants to keep his company making money at all costs, Dick Jones wants to keep his power and enrich himself, Bob Morton is personally ambitious. But somehow you draw distinctions between them. The Old Man is smart and calm, Jones is more straightforwardly villainly, and you end up rooting for Morton - who abuses the police and takes cocaine with prostitutes - because he goes up against Jones and in pursuit of his ambitions, ends up spearheading something great. Although he's not seen so much here, Johnson is set up as erring more towards the forces of light, even if again, his motives are never pure.
We're a fair bit more into the future than we were when this was made, so some things do stand out. Landline phones are still a thing. Fashion got stuck in an 80s timewarp. Cars still use combustion engines. One thing to note is that I don't think the robots seen in the film - Robocop and ED209 - have actually aged badly at all. They maybe don't look as futuristic as in 1987, but the movements, fights and everything all still stand up pretty well. But perhaps the biggest standout is the casual violence. This is a staggering violent film, even now, but that's part of it; the violence is casually accepted. The suits at the top of OCP witness at least two people gunned down in their own boardroom and never seem particularly phased by it. It works because it's so NORMALISED - every person for themselves, no mercy and no pity. It's also made more shocking by how casually it's combined with genuinely funny humour, for instance when Boddicker is aiming his gun at Murphy, somewhat early on.
I know this was made partly as a satire of the Reagan years, but to be honest I only know that because I read it. It doesn't come across too strongly to me. I know it's meant to be represented by the rise of mega-corporation OCP to be more powerful than seats of government, but anything like this was drowned out partly by the violence (not something I particularly associate with the 80s to the level it's seen here) and also because OCP isn't just straightforwardly villainous. They're shades of grey, some worse than others, most of them ambiguous.
It does have some more straightforward flaws to me too - what doesn't someone shoot Robocop in the chin? - but overall this still stands as a great film all these years later. The ending is just perfect. Highly recommended.
I think it's aged quite well, given that it's not far from its 40th birthday. To me, this is a film mostly about the characters in it, who are by far the most memorable takeaway. Robocop himself is a complicated character, theoretically supposed to be a cyborg but haunted by memories and eventually clinging on to rather more humanity than intended. Clarence Boddicker is a very memorable villain, not least because his sneering and arrogance sits behind a balding, bespectacled bank manager's face; his gang manages to be repulsive but all of them are quite distinctive and some effort seems to have gone into making them all individuals. The cops are a bit more straightforward - Sgt Reed is a tough superior who you've seen in a lot of films, and Lewis is a tough, incorruptible equivalent to a beat officer in this world. By far the most interesting are the executives of OCP, who are many shades of grey. None of them has a good motive; the Old Man wants to keep his company making money at all costs, Dick Jones wants to keep his power and enrich himself, Bob Morton is personally ambitious. But somehow you draw distinctions between them. The Old Man is smart and calm, Jones is more straightforwardly villainly, and you end up rooting for Morton - who abuses the police and takes cocaine with prostitutes - because he goes up against Jones and in pursuit of his ambitions, ends up spearheading something great. Although he's not seen so much here, Johnson is set up as erring more towards the forces of light, even if again, his motives are never pure.
We're a fair bit more into the future than we were when this was made, so some things do stand out. Landline phones are still a thing. Fashion got stuck in an 80s timewarp. Cars still use combustion engines. One thing to note is that I don't think the robots seen in the film - Robocop and ED209 - have actually aged badly at all. They maybe don't look as futuristic as in 1987, but the movements, fights and everything all still stand up pretty well. But perhaps the biggest standout is the casual violence. This is a staggering violent film, even now, but that's part of it; the violence is casually accepted. The suits at the top of OCP witness at least two people gunned down in their own boardroom and never seem particularly phased by it. It works because it's so NORMALISED - every person for themselves, no mercy and no pity. It's also made more shocking by how casually it's combined with genuinely funny humour, for instance when Boddicker is aiming his gun at Murphy, somewhat early on.
I know this was made partly as a satire of the Reagan years, but to be honest I only know that because I read it. It doesn't come across too strongly to me. I know it's meant to be represented by the rise of mega-corporation OCP to be more powerful than seats of government, but anything like this was drowned out partly by the violence (not something I particularly associate with the 80s to the level it's seen here) and also because OCP isn't just straightforwardly villainous. They're shades of grey, some worse than others, most of them ambiguous.
It does have some more straightforward flaws to me too - what doesn't someone shoot Robocop in the chin? - but overall this still stands as a great film all these years later. The ending is just perfect. Highly recommended.