RoboCop (1987)

One of the (many) reasons the 1995 Judge Dredd movie landed so poorly was its heavy-handed attempt to shoehorn in 'wacky' humour in the style of 1987's Robocop.

The irony being, of course, that Robocop itself draws heavily on the original Judge Dredd comic strips from 2000AD for its own inspiration, resulting in some heavy ouroborosian feedback.

As with the 2000AD character. Robocop presents a brutal nightmare vision of the "future of law enforcement" in a satirical narrative that blends social commentary with high octane action and Grand Guignol levels of ultraviolence.

It's been years since I've watched this movie and I'd forgotten just how freaking cool it is.

Almost every line in Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner's script has major requotability factor, so many scenes and characters are iconic, and the whole affair is handled with deft delight by one by Hollywood's masters of movie mayhem, director Paul Verhoeven.

In the near-future, crime is running rampant in Detroit, so the city enters into a partnership with  mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to run the police department.

OCP's secret plan is to eliminate crime from Old Detroit allowing it to be easily bulldozed and then replaced with a new development under their total control, Delta City.

ED-209 demonstration

OCP Senior President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) also wants to supplant the police with his giant, militaristic ED-209 robots, but these prove dangerously unreliable, allowing upstart executive Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) to push ahead with his "robocop" scheme.

This cyborg project, however, requires the use of a recently dead police officer and so OCP has been manoeuvring suitable candidates into dangerous positions.

Enter fresh transfer to the Metro West precinct, the charming officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller).

On his first patrol with partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), the pair are ambushed by the psychotic, bespectacled, gang lord Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his cadre of disturbed goons.

Murphy is tortured by the thugs and finally shot in the head by Boddicker...

Only to wake up months later as the cyborg police officer codenamed Robocop, with a mission to clean up Old Detroit.

This, of course, means he ends up crossing the path of Boddicker's gang again, and the sight of them causes PTSD flashbacks in his programming and, ultimately, conflict with his corporate superiors. 

Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith)

Even after 36 years, Robocop is a timeless and enjoyable blend of early superhero flick and pure copaganda (the overworked and underequipped police force are shown to be as much the victims of the surge in violent crime as the innocent civilians of Detroit).

It's s a classic sci-fi adventure story about a square-jawed, downtrodden cop (who happens to be a superstrong robot man) exposing corruption at the highest level of a wicked corporation... while simultaneously taking on the city's most dangerous villains.

Murphy is Judge Dredd and Batman rolled into one, but leaning much further towards 2000AD's flagship character than DC Comics'.

Even though a fair bit of the contemporary technology on display - and the extrapolations of what "future tech" might look like from an 1987 perspective - could be seen as dated (I mean, look at the TV sets for one thing), for me, that just adds to the movie's enduring charm, accentuating the odd priorities of this imagined 21st Century environment.