Robocop (DVD)

"The best science-fiction film since Metropolis" according to Ken Russell and the suprise sleeper hit of 1987, Robocop is a razor sharp futuristic action film with much food for thought directed by Paul Verhoeven, a then little known Dutch director who proved to be an inspired choice. Murphy (Paul Weller) is a policeman in a nightmarish vision of a near future city of Detroit. Detroit is now the crime capital of the United States and its downtown area has become such a lawless wasteland that it is about to demolished to make way for 'Delta City', a huge urban redevelopment programme. Delta City is to be built by Omniconsumer Products, a sinister corporate ...  Read the complete review

Paul Verhoven's 1987 sci-fi action film shares certain things with his later work Starship Troopers in its satirical attack on the gung-ho, gun-loving nature of mainstream American culture, whilst also taking pot-shots at the stranglehold of influence held by the mainstream media and large corporations along the way. Aside from these themes however it essentially remains a futuristic update of the classic westerns in which a hard-nosed sheriff is sent in to clean up a violent town with a zero-tolerance approach and plenty of gratuitous violence. The film opens with Detroit police officer Murphy (Peter Weller) hot on the tail of a bunch of a gang of crooks led ...  Read the complete review

There's good films and then there's good films that defined a genre. Along with The Terminator, Robocop is considered to be one of the most definitive movies of Cyberpunk, a subgenre of Science Fiction; an exploration of man with machine. Paul Verhoeven's film is brutally violent, funny, and thought provocative. A classic. It's a scary thought living in the future. "Old Detroit", as it's called, is all about Capitalism and the media, with little regard for the people's lives. The Police Department has become privatized due to financial ruin, and crime on the streets is getting out of control. Enter "Robocop" (Paul Weller) a cyborg police ...  Read the complete review

Christ allegory, social satire, protest film, blinding sci-fi action extravaganza - Paul Verhoeven's masterful 1987 Robocop is all of these and more. The tale of an inner-city cop killed in the line of duty and subsequently resurrected as the titular part-man / part-machine uber-enforcer, Robocop is the sharpest of Hollywood's sci-fi / action epics of the 1980s / early 90s by a long shot, besting even John Cameron's The Terminator and Verhoeven's own Total Recall. His second Hollywood-produced feature following a handful of hugely successful (both critically and commercially) Dutch productions (most notable of which being 1983's The Fourth Man and 1977's ...  Read the complete review

Eight years old, in the primary school playground. My friend Alan had seen a video called Robocop, and he said it was so violently gory that it made him puke and gave him nightmares. He said there was this bit where this robot with machine guns for arms called ED-209 shot some guy to pieces. He always looked pale and broke out in a cold sweat when he talked about this scene. Naturally, I would often chase him around the playground pretending to be ED-209. It was several years later when I saw Robocop for myself, and it took several years more before I could appreciate it fully. Paul Verhoeven's Robocop is one of my favourite popular films of all time, ...  Read the complete review