RoboCop

I'd buy that for a dollar and a dime. Outbid them fair and square. This is one of the Verhoeven masterpieces. It's a bit of action and a bit of parody, and a lot of "in your face" directing that puts Verhoeven a step above Tarantino, because Tarantino actually makes fun of the geeks in the audience with one dimensional characters, while Verhoeven gives multiple dimensions to everyone. Here, we have a police force that is collapsing to crime that is idolized. Talk about seeing the future! Big business claims they run the police force by equipping them like they do the military. One little cop, Murphy, runs afoul of the most dangerous criminal, and this criminal is something else. He will probably make you laugh with his nerdy look and his lines, but he's deadly. However, he does tell his gang to give Murphy a hand. The big business has a big boss, an older guy about to retire according to his second in command, Dick. And Dick is aptly named. Meanwhile, a young upstart who is a bit of an anti villain or anti hero, played by Miguel Ferrer, is not afraid of "Dick". You may have seen some of the famous scenes, and you've surely heard the catch line "I'd buy that for a dollar", which is meant to be the very nonsense catch phrase that it became. Peter Weller is Murphy, and Nancy Allen is his loyal police partner who lets one of the bad guys take her out, but she does come back in. The black comedy of this film helps to make it the classic it is.

Peter Weller is policeman "Murphy" who doesn't make it through his first day on patrol is the brutally lawless Detroit. Luckily for him, though, the "Omni" company has been developing plans for a semi-automated, heavily armed super cop - and pretty smartly he has been fused into this pretty amazing - if totally clunky - body armour that enables him to carry out his new duties with our fear of injury. Pretty soon, though, he discovers that he is amidst a web of corruption. Can he stay alive, keep his partner "Anne" (Nancy Allen) safe and thwart the evil plot that may well be tied into the criminals who left him for dead in the first place? Plenty of action and pyrotechnics follow as the story marches along to it's pretty obvious conclusion. Plenty of pace, some pretty banal dialogue - it's all the usual stuff that I found adequate, but really pretty dated now. Weller is ok, but I'd sooner have had Arnie in the role to inject some charisma and a little humour to this otherwise rather dry and procedural affair. It's perfectly watchable, but I can't quite rave about it.

Seen this several times over the years and still holds up well, story and satire wise, though certainly some of the effects were dated (in particular the death of one character falling out a window). Other than that, an entertaining and bloody 1980s action-thriller, where the sequels and a remake, and certainly the third entry, could not touch. Would like to think the proposed RoboCop Returns will succeed where other failed, but don't hold out much hope. **4.25/5**