2/28/15 (Part One): The Tin Man Rides Into the Sunset

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'90s films, 1990s films, action films, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Locke, CCH Pounder, cinema, cyborgs, Daniel von Bargen, Delta City, Detroit, dystopian future, evil corporations, Felton Perry, film reviews, films, franchises, Fred Dekker, Jill Hennessy, John Castle, Judson Vaughn, Mad Max, Mako, man vs machine, mercenaries, Movies, Nancy Allen, near future, Night of the Creeps, OCP, Officer Lewis, Officer Murphy, Peter Weller, rebels, Remy Ryan, Rip Torn, Robert Burke, Robert DoQui, RoboCop, RoboCop 3, sci-fi, sequels, set in Detroit, Shane Black, Stephen Root, street gangs, The Monster Squad, writer-director

Sometimes, a film can hit just about all its marks and still be disappointing: take Fred Dekker’s RoboCop 3 (1993), for example. Here’s a movie where expectations are already set fairly low (this is the third one, after all, and the first without Peter Weller behind the helmet), yet there’s every possibility to be not only pleasantly surprised but genuinely blown away…after all, Dekker is the unmitigated genius behind two of the greatest genre films of all time, Night of the Creeps (1986) and The Monster Squad (1987). In his more than capable hands, RoboCop 3 could have been the caustically funny, surprising joy that RoboCop 2 (1990) should have been. Instead, the film ends up being a thoroughly competent, middle-of-the-road sci-fi action film with only hints of Dekker’s demented genius. An auteur like Dekker reduced to the role of hired gun? Say it ain’t so, Joe!

The film kicks off with a pretty familiar scenario: the loathsome OCP is still trying to build their dream project, Delta City, over the charred bones and lower-class citizens of near-future Detroit. As in the previous RoboCop films, Detroit is still a war-zone: this time around, the prime offenders are a mob of stereotypical “punk” marauders dubbed The Splatterpunks, who seem to delight in setting any and everything ablaze with Molotov cocktails. In a telling development, OCP is taken over by the Japanese mega-conglomerate, Kanemitsu Corporation, making Detroit the first U.S. city to come under foreign rule. The new president, the titular Kanemitsu (Mako), is a no-nonsense businessman who’s tired of OCP continually missing its deadlines for breaking ground on Delta City.

In order to help along the process of claiming property that the residents don’t want to part with, OCP employs a collection of mercenaries known as Urban Rehabilitation Officers (Rehabs, for short). The Rehabs are, ostensibly, being used to fight the rising crime wave: in reality, they’re being used to forcibly remove the residents of the various slums that OCP wants to demolish. The residents are moved to “refugee camps” where they promptly seem to drop off the grid: the ultimate case of the “haves” doing away with the “have-nots.”

Our intrepid heroes, Officer Murphy (now played by Robert Burke, who looks a little like Weller, if you squint) and Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen) get caught up in the struggle when a group of homeless revolutionaries, led by scrappy Bertha (CCH Pounder) and Nikko (Remy Ryan), a pint-sized hacker who’s ably to handily turn lethal ED-209s into loyal “puppies” with the push of a button, butt heads with the Rehab officers, led by the odious Commander McDaggett (John Castle). In the ensuing chaos, Officer Lewis is killed (RoboCop’s sad “Officer down” line is just as ludicrous on paper as it is in the film) and Murphy is branded a murderous renegade. As OCP and the Kanemitsu Corporation fill the airwaves with bogus stories about RoboCop’s villainy, OCP’s CEO (Rip Torn) and Kanemitsu work behind the scenes to eliminate the cyborg avenger and clear the last roadblock to the long-delayed Delta City. To this end, Kanemitsu unleashes his own cyborg, a lethal-killing machine known as Otomo (Bruce Locke). Will RoboCop and the revolutionaries be able to stop OCP and the Rehabs once and for all or does the dawn of Delta City begin now?

While the first film was a fairly streamlined, subtly ironic sci-fi action film, ala Mad Max (1979), the sequel employed the “bigger is better” aesthetic, pumping up the action scenes while letting some air out of the more subversive ideas. In the process, RoboCop 2 became a much sillier, louder and goofier film, albeit one with enough inherent parallels to the original to serve as a more than suitable follow-up. RoboCop 3, by contrast, is the most cartoonish of the three films, as well as the first of them to earn a PG13 rating: as expected, this means that the film is exponentially less gritty and gorier, although the body count is still exceptionally high…in this case, it just means that hordes of baddies “fall down,” ala old Westerns, rather than explode in red sprays of arterial fluid.

By itself, this isn’t really a problem: the second film was, in reality, only a few small steps removed from a complete cartoon and (brain surgery scene notwithstanding) had about as much impact. The bigger issue comes from the fact that the whole film is obviously pitched at much younger audiences: all of the issues are very black-and-white and the very character of Nikko feels like nothing more than an attempt to insert a pre-teen hero into the mix. Compared to the foul-mouthed urchins in RoboCop 2, Nikko is Little Orphan Annie and the whole thing has a trite feel that definitely feels aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Acting-wise, RoboCop 3 is extremely broad, although the style does tend to work, since the film is inherently broad and silly. Burke does a suitable job as Weller’s replacement, although he doesn’t sound anything like our original Officer Murphy. We get a few “regulars” here, such as Nancy Allen, Felton Perry and Robert DoQui, although they’re pretty much relegated to the background for the majority of the film, allowing newcomers like Ryan, Pounder and Stephen Root (always a joy to see) to step up to the plate. For his part, Rip Torn turns in the kind of performance that he’s been autopiloting for way too long, although his smug bureaucrat fits the film’s heart-on-sleeve politics like a glove.

More than anything, I’m disappointed that so little of Dekker actually shows through in the final product. Short of a few scattered scenes and details (the OCP exec jumping out of a window while his wife harangues him on the phone, RoboCop driving the blazing, Pepto-pink pimp-mobile around like it was a tank) that are explicitly reminiscent of Dekker’s tongue-in-cheek approach, the film is depressingly generic and middle-of-the-road. It’s always bummed me out that Dekker only directed three films in his entire career and this was one of them: it’s equivalent to Francis Ford Coppola’s entire filmography consisting of The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Jack (1996). At the very least, Dekker has recently been rumored to be involved in Shane Black’s new Predator reboot: fingers crossed that this translates into him directing the film, although a Dekker script is (usually) a thing of beauty, so that’d be fine, too.

Ultimately, RoboCop 3 is not a terrible film: in many ways, it’s no worse (or better) than a hundred other direct-to-video, ’90s era “gems.” While the film is competently done, however, it also possesses no real sense of identity or even much in the way of distinguishing features: it just “is,” for better or worse. Since the third entry seemed to effectively nail the coffin lid shut (at least until the recent reboot), it’s fair to say that our heroic man of steel had already passed his expiration date by this point, a mere six years after he debuted. Quite the pity, really: with Fred Dekker writing and directing, RoboCop 3 should have been one of the most unforgettable franchise entries ever. Instead, the film is so generic as to be completely forgettable: now that’s irony that’s right up Fred Dekker’s twisted little alley.

 

2/25/15 (Part Two): The Tin Man Rides Again

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'90s films, 1990s films, action films, action-comedies, Belinda Bauer, cinema, cyborgs, Dan O'Herlihy, Delta City, Detroit, drug epidemic, dystopian future, evil corporations, fake commericals, Felton Perry, film franchise, film reviews, films, Frank Miller, Gabriel Damon, Irvin Kershner, man vs machine, Movies, Nancy Allen, near future, Never Say Never Again, OCP, Officer Murphy, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, Robert DoQui, RoboCop, RoboCop 2, sci-fi, sequels, set in Detroit, street drugs, street gangs, The Empire Strikes Back, Tom Noonan, Willard Pugh

After RoboCop (1987) became a box office hit and a bit of a pop culture phenomenon, it was only inevitable that we’d be graced with a sequel, sooner or later. Enter Irvin Kershner’s RoboCop 2 (1990), a movie that manages to up the ante in every way possible, as befits pretty much any action/sci-fi sequel you might care to name. As the director behind such blockbusters as The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Never Say Never Again (1983), Kershner was a much different filmmaker than the scrappy, sardonic Paul Verhoeven and it shows: RoboCop 2 is a much goofier, sillier and more over-the-top film than its predecessor…not surprisingly, it’s also a whole lot of fun.

We’re now a few years past the original film and nothing seems to have really changed: OCP is still in charge of Detroit’s police department, who are still threatening to strike; Delta City is still on the horizon as the ultimate “beautification” project; the streets are still over-run with crime and marauding gangs; and Officer Murphy (Peter Weller), aka RoboCop, is still partnered up with Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen). The big issue this time around is the emergence of a lethal, ultra-addictive new street drug called Nuke: the drug is being pushed onto the streets in mass quantities by Cain (Tom Noonan), a religious fanatic/drug dealer/wannabe-messiah who holds the city in the grip of fear thanks to his numerous bombings and terrorist activities…think of Jim Jones and The Joker mashed into one roiling ball of lunacy and you’re in the right neighborhood.

Turns out that OCP engineered the Nuke epidemic and resulting crime wave as a way to stretch Detroit’s resources and force them to default on a huge loan: if the city misses a single payment, OCP gets to swoop in and take it all, free of charge. Bastards! They’re also developing a new type of cyborg, an “improved” version that OCP’s scientists have cleverly dubbed “RoboCop 2.” The only problem with the new cyborgs are that they’re a little…well, a little…glitchy: in a bravura moment, one prototype blithely guns down an entire room of onlookers while another one rips its one face off, screaming in (literal) blood terror. The problem, as any good Frankenstein could tell you, is the brain: the project’s head researcher, the sinister Dr. Faxx (Belinda Bauer), has yet to find a brain that can survive the automation process…but you better believe it’s not for lack of looking.

After RoboCop disobeys a direct order (thanks to more of those pesky residual memories of his), OCP decides to make him more “obedient”: Dr. Faxx inputs several dozen new directives into his hard-drive, changes which, effectively, turn RoboCop into a big weenie. Once the stoic face of criminal ass-kicking, RoboCop is now a grinning, puppy-hugging, rule-following, bureaucratic wuss: as can be expected, he’s also a much less effective police officer now that he’s pathologically “nice.” As Cain and his crazy gang ramp up their assault on the city, Officer Lewis and the rest of the force must, somehow, snap RoboCop back to his old self. At the same time, Dr. Faxx approaches Cain with a once-in-a-lifetime offer: the genuine chance to become a god…or at least as close to it as he’ll ever get. Will RoboCop be able to get his mojo back in time to duke it out with the new-and-improved Cain or does OCP finally hold the fate of Detroit in its greedy, little hands?

While the majority of the humor in the first film was more subtle and blackly comic (aside from the glorious scene where RoboCop drags Leon out of the “punk” club by his hair, of course), all of the humor in the sequel is much more overt and front-and-center. This extends to the numerous fake commercials which break up the action, much as they did in the original film: this time around, the commercials are much more over-the-top and function less as cutting satire than as broader buffoonery. In some ways, the tone of the film is much closer to the sequels to Lloyd Kaufman’s Toxic Avenger (1984) in their depiction of a dystopic world gone wildly, giddily off the tracks. Like the first film, the world-building in the sequel is strong, forging a good bond between the two films. At one point, a commercial for “Sunblock 5000” casually mentions that the ozone layer is gone, while a throwaway news bit discusses a rogue satellite frying Santa Barbara in the same way that one might ask someone to pick up their dry cleaning. The details are all quite fun (if more than a little silly) and help to make the film that much more immersive.

If I really have a complaint with the film (other than the fact that it’s a solid half-step down from the original), it has to be with the main villain: while Tom Noonan really sinks his teeth into the role of Cain and runs with it, he’s absolutely no match for the inspired insanity of Kurtwood Smith’s iconic Clarence Boddicker. In many ways, Noonan is constantly upstaged by Gabriel Damon’s Hob, the ridiculously foul-mouthed kid who slings Nuke for Cain’s gang: by the latter half of the film, Hob has become the defacto leader (albeit briefly) and that’s when the villains really seem to take off. In an action film like this, you really need unforgettable, hateful villains and RoboCop 2’s just pale to the originals, unfortunately.

Cast-wise, the film brings back many of the original actors, including Weller, Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Felton Perry and Robert DoQui (as the ever-suffering Sgt. Reed). This, of course, has the effect of creating an even stronger connection with the first film, a connection that’s reinforced by the production design: while many sequels have a “more of the same” feel, RoboCop 2 definitely feels like a continuation of a longer narrative, even if that narrative feels a bit unnecessary, by the end. In fact, it’s easy to see this sense of “continuation” as intentional, since the film has a completely open ending that not only doesn’t fully resolve the action but also directly sets up another film (a set-up which the third film, unfortunately, doesn’t make good on).

Even though RoboCop 2 is a much sillier, more weightless film than the first, there’s still a lot to like here: the more overt comedy leads to some great scenes like the ridiculous telethon where Mayor Kuzak (Willard Pugh) desperately tries to raise the funds to save Detroit (with the help of a fiddle-playing contortionist, no less!) or the giddy setpiece where a gang of Little League players commit a violent robbery and are let loose by the newly “nice” RoboCop, since they’re just kids. One interesting aspect of the film is how often we get treated to some rather eyebrow-raising moments involving the numerous child actors: they’re all saltier than a pack of sailors, with a particular favorite line being “Go fuck a refrigerator, pecker-neck!” To be honest, I don’t think I can recall a film where kids swore this much (there are plenty of films where kids engage in violent behavior, so that was considerably less surprising) and it made me bust out laughing more often than not.

Weller handles the new comedy angle with aplomb (his “nice” scenes are genuinely funny), which has the effect of humanizing Murphy to a much greater extent than the first film ever did. It’s great to have Allen back, as well, although it doesn’t feel as if she gets as much to do as she did the first time around. And, above complaint notwithstanding, Noonan is always a reliably unhinged performer: if he didn’t have such big shoes to fill, I doubt if I would have anything bad to say about his performance, to be honest.

While the sequel is a great deal goofier than the original, it’s not necessarily any less gratuitous: this time around, we get treated to an incredibly graphic brain transplant scene, along with the goofy “brain stem with googly eyes” bit that triumphantly ends the final battle. Since the film is pitched at such a comic-book level, however, the whole thing actually feels less violent than the original, which managed to ground everything in a more realistic, if still fantastic, milieu.

For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed RoboCop 2, even if it was distinctly inferior to the original. There’s plenty of great action sequences, some genuinely funny comedic bits and a strong connection to the first film, making it pretty much essential viewing for anyone who enjoyed Verhoeven’s original. While this is nowhere hear the follow-up that either Terminator 2 (1991) or Aliens (1986) was, RoboCop 2 is a perfectly decent continuation of the franchise and a good way for fans to another dose of some good old-fashioned, cyborg law and order.

2/25/15 (Part One): The Tin Man With the Big Ol’ Heart

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'80s action films, '80s films, 1980s films, 4th Directive, action films, blockbusters, cinema, Clarence Boddicker, co-writers, cops, cybernetics, cyborgs, Dan O'Herlihy, dark humor, Delta City, Detroit, Dick Jones, dystopian future, ED-209, Edward Neumeier, evil corporations, fake commericals, film franchise, film reviews, films, Jesse Goins, Kurtwood Smith, Leeza Gibbons, man vs machine, Michael Miner, Miguel Ferrer, Movies, multiple writers, Nancy Allen, near future, OCP, past memories, Paul McCrane, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, police, Ray Wise, Robert DoQui, RoboCop, Ronny Cox, sci-fi, science-fiction, set in Detroit, street gangs

It’s always a hoot to look back on bygone visions for “the future,” now that we’re firmly ensconced in it. The Jetsons promised us flying cars, Silent Running (1972) posited orbiting outer space greenhouses and 1984…well, we all know how rosy that was supposed to be, don’t we? While most notions of the future do a fair amount of credibility stretching (where are all those instant food machines and self-dressing booths that were supposed to make life so easy?), few have managed to be quite as fanciful as Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987): after all, this is a film that envisions Detroit as a bankrupt, crime-ridden wasteland, foresees mega-corporations taking over law enforcement (to the mass detriment of the lower classes) and theorizes that cybernetic implants will one day be advanced enough to allow the severely disabled and/or injured to resume some semblance of autonomous movement…in other words, what a bunch of malarkey, eh?

In all seriousness, despite its often campy tone, the original RoboCop is actually a pretty lean, mean, relentless little bruiser, similar in tone to Cameron’s original Terminator (1984) or Miller’s inaugural Mad Max (1979). Like these franchises (or pretty much any action franchises, to be honest), the original film is a much more modest, grounded affair than any of the resulting sequels. Thanks to an ever-prevalent streak of pitch-black humor and some great performances from the likes of Peter Weller, Kurtwood Smith (That ’70s Show’s Red Forman), Nancy Allen, Ray Wise and Ronny Cox, RoboCop is a fun, exhilarating and clever peek into a future where business and bureaucracy are king and humanity’s future rests on a pair of very sturdy steel shoulders.

It’s the mean streets of Detroit, in the near future, and the city’s police department is run by the omnipresent OmniCorp (OCP, to the punters), the kind of all-reaching octopus conglomerate that has its tentacles in everything from gene research to government insurrection to military weaponry. OCP CEO Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) has a pet project that threatens to revolutionize law enforcement and allow for the clean-up of the city’s crime problem ahead of a sparkly new development deal dubbed Delta City: the all-robotic, crime-fighting ED-209. Only problem is, the thing doesn’t work, as we see when it blasts a hapless volunteer to kingdom come during a test run in the board room.

Enter Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), a pretender to the throne with his own plan: the RoboCop project, wherein real police officers are infused with state-of-the-art cybernetics in order to create superior “cyborg” cops. They need a subject, of course, which comes around in the form of Murphy (Peter Weller), an eager-beaver, rising star who gets transferred into hell on earth and is promptly shot to shit by the villainous Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith, chewing delicious scenery by the mile) and his murderous street gang. Legally “dead,” Murphy is turned into the titular hero, a galvanized steel “peace officer” whose just as likely to leave the suspects in pieces.

As RoboCop cuts a swath through Detroit’s criminal population, he begins to regain some of his basic humanity, thanks to the attention of his former partner, Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen), and some recurring memory snippets that give tantalizing hints of his former life and family. Torn between being a soulless machine and a living, breathing human being, RoboCop fights with retaining the essential humanity that made him “Murphy.” As he gets closer to the criminal mastermind who originally ended his life, however, Murphy will learn that the web of corruption spins all the way to the hallowed halls of OCP’s upper echelon. Will RoboCop have what it takes to put an end to the evil or will the very nature of his existence prevent him from dispensing the justice that Detroit so desperately needs?

One of the biggest pleasures of Verhoeven’s RoboCop is the assured way in which the Dutch director builds his dystopic world, using a combination of pitch black humor, pulse-pounding action setpieces and some truly cool special effects, including some nicely realized stop-motion animation. The satiric commercials that break up the action are frequently funny (the one for the Nukem board game is simply sublime) but they also help to give peeks into the larger world, the skewed, slightly scary one that exists outside the framework of the film, proper. The series actually develops this further in the second installment but it’s a great aspect and really adds to the overall feel.

Any pulpy action flick lives or dies by two elements: its action sequences and its cast. In both of these aspects, RoboCop comes across as a pretty stellar example of the genre. While Weller’s performance here is iconic, it’s just one solid performance among many. Nancy Allen is great as his spunky partner, while Cox and Smith are pitch-perfect as the arch-villain and his sleazy second-in-command. Boddicker’s gang is one of the great groups of cinematic baddies, spotlighted by an incredibly spirited turn by veteran Ray Wise as Leon (the scene set in the “punk” club is absolutely delightful).

While it might be easy to associate Verhoeven with his most outrageous “low” (that would, of course, be Showgirls (1995)), his resume also includes Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997): the director clearly knows his way around sci-fi action and the whole shebang kicked off with RoboCop. The film is full of great action moments, shootouts and car chases, reminding of the aforementioned Mad Max and Terminator in the ways in which the setpieces always seem grounded in some kind of physical reality, regardless of how fanciful the action gets. It’s the kind of physicality that gets lost in modern CGI-based action films and gives RoboCop a bruised, scuffed feeling that fits like a well-worn shoe.

Similar to the Mad Max and Terminator franchises, the RoboCop franchise would go on to bigger, louder and more outlandish heights in future installments. While the other films in the series all have their charms (the third one, much less so, admittedly), my heart will always belong with Verhoeven’s brash, snarky and full-blooded original. When the satire, action and political commentary all hit their mark, there are few ’80s blockbusters that are in the same league as RoboCop (no matter how many times I watch the finale, I always stand and cheer at the “You’re fired” line). Jones and Boddicker are classic villains, RoboCop is the quintessential knight in shining armor and Anne Lewis is just the kind of partner that you want watching your back, when the chips are down.

In an era where business and technology continue their vociferous joint march to the sea, it’s kind of nice to see a film where the little guy wins, even if we know that OCP is going to keep trying to get their pound of flesh long after the cameras cut. More importantly, RoboCop still holds up today as a great action film: compared to other ’80s fare, it’s much less dated and more streamlined. While it’s undeniably pulpy, it’s also pretty hard to hard to deny the film’s allure: you might have the right to remain silent but I’m willing to bet you’ll be doing a fair amount of cheering, too.