Overlooked Movie Marathon 2: Robocop (1987)

Robocop is a movie that I remember from my childhood.  It’s not because I had watched it before.  I hadn’t watched it until this second annual Overlooked Movie Marathon.  If I had seen it before, I never would have included it.  No.  I remember in my childhood that I had a cousin who was obsessed with the movie and its sequels.  He’s only a year or two older than me, so when I was six and hearing about this, he probably shouldn’t have been eight and watching the movies over and over again.  They are R rated movies, I believe.  It seems to me that he was a little young to be watching them repeatedly.  But he did, and I always heard about how great the Robocop movies were.  I never saw them though.  Robocop has always been a blind spot for me.  I’ve changed that now.

The first Robocop movie was released in 1987.  It stars Peter Weller as Officer Murphy, the man who becomes a robotic police officer, by way of Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), who had the idea.  Robocop is aided in crime fighting by Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) as he tries to take down a crime syndicate of sorts led by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith).  Also in the movie are Ray Wise, Ronny Cox, and Dan O’Herlihy.  Paul Verhoeven directed it.

What can I say about Robocop?  Should I say how the subject matter feels just as important and meaningful today as it would have in 1987?  It does.  Corporations still play a big role in society as we know it.  Everywhere you go, you see advertisements for Coca-Cola, Comcast, and McDonalds.  You turn on the television and there is tons of product placement in whatever you watch.  The money within companies is going to the people in higher positions.  Countries are saving bankrupt corporations and the corporations are funding the countries.  Robocop is about corporate greed.  Not all of it, but that’s a large chunk of it.  Corporate greed still exists.  It’s still relevant in today’s society.  Robocop still has a satirical edge that people can latch onto.  Robocop remains significant, twenty five years later.

The other thing to talk about with regards to Robocop is the character work in the movie.  I wouldn’t consider it a deep movie when it comes to the character moments, but there are enough throughout that I feel the need to make a note about them.  This is a movie about a man becoming a machine, and the realization that you can never remove what makes him human.  There will always be a little bit of human in him.  He might be 95% machine on the outside, but that does not lessen the amount of human that he is on the inside.  It might not be as big a part of the story as the corporate greed angle, but it’s still just as important to the overall story.

Ray Wise, guys.  Has he ever done bad work?  If he has, I sure haven’t seen it.  The guy has been great in everything I’ve seen him in.  Twin Peaks?  Great.  Reaper?  Great.  Mad Men?  Great.  Jeepers Creepers 2?  Great.  Good Night and Good Luck?  Well, everyone is great in that movie.  How I Met Your Mother?  Great.  And that’s barely anything he’s done, and definitely not all that I’ve seen him in.  But I find him great in everything I see him in.  Seeing him in Robocop got my excitement up even more, and he delivered.  Ray Wise should be put into the National Film Registry.  He’s not a film, but he should be preserved.

As you might be able to tell, I ran out of things to really write about for Robocop.  I enjoyed the movie.  It was fun.  It has a deeper meaning to society than you would think on the surface.  On the surface, it’s an explosively violent movie that is exciting to watch.  Deeper, it’s a criticism of all things capitalism.  Plus, there’s a little bit of heart in there.  Robocop is understandably not for everybody, but it definitely has its place in film history.

Next up in the second annual Overlooked Movie Marathon is LA Confidential.  I don’t know what to say, other than I’m going to watch it.  I’ll see you soon with some sort of writing about it.