RoboCop

RoboCop
Originally uploaded by livingfilm.

I love RoboCop. I think it is a great movie, that deserves to be looked at as more than just a run of the mill 80's action movie. I really haven't watched many of Paul Verhoeven's film's, besides Basic Instinct and Showgirls, and I think both of those movies are punishing. Actually Verhoeven seems to be most associated with Erotic thrillers, a genre I really don't care much for. I usually think sex in film seems cheap, boring, and is quickly dated (see my post on Last Tango in Paris). Films like Loves of a Blonde or Onibaba would be couple of exceptions, but those each deserve their own posts. RoboCop fortunately leaves Eros out in the cold. Sort of.

RoboCop is a wonderfully hilarious, and even thoughtful satire, of modern America and it's attraction and dismissal to brutality. The use of the media as a sort of Greek chorus, is really brilliant. Through out the film we are given a vision of the future via the ever present media, from News Broadcasts that break the film into 3 acts including a commercial interruption for a family game called Nuke-em! to a Benny Hill type program (that seems to be played 24 hours all over the city with it's lead star looking at the camera with silly glasses and saying "I'd buy THAT for a dollar!" over and over.

RoboCop very effectively utilizes elements of several popular genres, from Science Fiction, to the Western revenge story, Film Noir (Peter Weller's Alex J. Murphy is the perfect noir protagonist caught in an existentialist Hell), and 80's American action film, all swirled together in one biting black comedy.

Many of you have already seen this film, and if it has been a while, I suggest watching it again. I think you will find that it satisfies.