![]() Corporations are the real criminals Ronny Cox as Dick Jones with ED-209 The institutions facilitating run-amok capitalism – whether political, corporate, or military-industrial – are the real threats to public safety and well-being in the movie. While labor unions were a public enemy for many in the conservative ’80s, Robocop is radically, subversively leftist and firmly on the side of besieged workers. But like the lovely opening shot, it’s another bit of misdirection by Verhoeven. ![]() It’s as though he wants to put the viewer on notice that, while Robocop may go on the video store shelf next to The Toxic Avenger, it will hardly be some tossed-off exploitation quickie.Ī gnarly toxic avenger of sorts does appear late in the movie thanks to that ubiquitous ‘80s movie feature, a vat of acid, but the looming threat in that early scene is that the police officers might strike, thus leaving the populace unprotected. Even as the angry Black police sergeant yells “scumbag” repeatedly (could anything be more ‘80s?), Verhoeven establishes the station and the new recruit, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), with some complexly choreographed long takes and a moving camera. Robocop has plenty of all of that, but the acclaimed Dutch director Paul Verhoeven - who was making only his second film in America after Flesh + Blood - signals that he is a serious filmmaker by employing bravura filmmaking early on. Any old straight-to-video geek show would do as long as it contained some splatter gore and a little T&A and maybe had a sense of humor about itself. This was partially due to the massive popularity of the new home video market that was desperate for products to fill the shelves. Paul Verhoeven is a serious director OrionĪ lot of bad movies were made in the 1980s, and many of them were in traditionally disreputable genres like science fiction and horror. Among the many reasons why the movie remains so popular after 35 years (rousing sci-fi action, scathing wit, seamless world-building, first-rate filmmaking) is this insistence that the good among us can still rise from the (sometimes radioactive) muck that threatens to overwhelm us. Robocop is a movie about these evil men, the venal institutions over which they preside, and the flickers of human decency that keep them from enveloping what good is left of the human spirit. When a crime boss chews out a subordinate for accidentally scorching the cash from a robbery, he seems almost as aghast at the desecration of the pristine greenbacks as the fact that the gang won’t be able to spend them. Any beauty is seen through the eyes of rapacious men who can only appreciate the lethal curves and angles of militarized steel, the vertiginous skyscrapers of wealth and privilege, and the shimmering aura of money in all its forms. Fitbit Versa 3Īh, but it’s an ironic joke - one of many at the expense of the city’s people who yearn for a livable urban environment amongst the industrial ruin - because nothing else in the movie will be beautiful, at least not in conventional terms.
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