Reviews

My first comment posted on imdb was for RoboCop, but all it said was to avoid "RoboCop 2." Looking back, that seemed like a pretty lame way to comment on "RoboCop," my favorite movie of all time. I hereby present the following, more relevant review:

"How can your favorite movie be RoboCop?" I get that question a lot now, it seems. I'm not sure I want to write some kind of terribly detailed explanation of why this is my favorite movie of all time. Quite simply, everything in the movie works for me. To therefore try to explain what I like about the movie would equate to me writing about why a joke is funny when someone didn't get it. However, I'll give an effort here.

I'll go ahead and state two main reasons on why I like the movie that most other fans of the movie probably didn't already state, such as the notion that it is a great satire of the corporatization of America, that it is ultra-violent and therefore cool, or that it works great as a bleak near-future sci-fi comedy. I didn't really dwell on those things when I saw this movie the first few times. So what did I like about it? SPOILER ALERT First of all, it is an extreme movie, but unlike many movies the extremeness works in this case. I felt the lowest point of disgust, the most uncomfortable fear, the highest thrills of triumph, moments of sadness, and moments of hilarity. The execution of Alex Murphy is one of the most horrifying things I had ever seen. I felt sooooo bad because of what happened, but this was brilliant on the part of the filmmakers because it made RoboCop that much more fun to root for, and it made his revenge that much sweeter. RoboCop then exists to counter all the woes we can experience. One very scary scene to me is the one where Emil threatens the college boy at the gas station (for anyone who's ever been behind the counter in a store, this scenario is dreadful!). It's even scarier than the scene where the armed robber holds up the mom and pop store, because in the other scene you know what Emil is capable of. Anyway, in both cases, out comes RoboCop to put the fear back in to the criminal. Elsewhere, RoboCop experiences deep loss because he has lost his past life, and for him to slowly realize that was very sad to me; he slowly finds out that he has lost his life and has been turned into a programmed robot. The scene where he revisits his house really made me sad; no one else gets a chance to come back from the dead and see what has happened since he had died and what he has lost because of it, and no one ever should. Therefore it's another joy to watch him triumph beyond that as well, as he starts to regain some semblance of free will and identity (and, thus, end the movie on a high note when he answers the question of "What's your name?" with a self-assured "Murphy."). Add to that the satirical humor littered throughout the movie (the corporate cutthroats, the stupid "I'd buy that for a dollar!" guy, the news briefs), and it's got all the ingredients to touch every emotion: anger, pity, elation, laughter.

Second of all, to put it quite simply: RoboCop is just plain cool! I loved comic book-style heroes, but to me RoboCop was the ultimate comic book hero. He's a cyborg, and he doesn't look cheesy, he looks slick (having become a fan of Transformers and RoboTech, a cyborg could easily get on my good side). He's got a huge gun that he can holster in his leg. He has great comic hero lines ("Your move, creep!" "Dead or alive, you're coming with me." "Come quietly or there will be... trouble."). And best of all, he's practically invulnerable! Poor helpless Murphy gets wasted by one of the most evil gangs of villains you've ever seen; they toy with him and laugh at his slaying. Then he comes back and they can't touch him. In the cocaine factory, he takes them all out, one shot at a time. He throws Clarence Boddicker (to me, the most evil slimeball villain ever; hats off to Kurtwood Smith!) through several windows and barely holds back from strangling him... with ease. The bad guys can't stop him, and in the final showdown, they come somewhat close, but you always know that they don't really have a chance. And these bad guys get it but good in the end. Of course, the worst is Emil's toxic waste death. How many murderers would you like to see get taken out like that? Anyhow, I loved RoboCop as a comic hero and a movie hero. Because you know what happened to him, you root for him all the way, from the moment he is being built to his final showdowns with Clarence and Dick Jones.

So many other things are cool in the movie: how RoboCop takes out the rapist, the stop-motion ED-209, the little goofy commercials, the supporting cast which includes Murphy's partner Lewis, Sgt. Reed, RoboCop creator Bob Morton (go Miguel Ferrer, another actor whose specialty is slimeballs!). This is a spectacular entry into sci-fi, and was every much as big in the '80's as other sci-fi greats like Aliens, Terminator, and Predator. But in those movies, the good guys were always disadvantaged. Not so with RoboCop. "Go Robo!"

I'd guess you'd have to add me to the list of disappointed people.

My girlfriend and I channel-surfed on to this movie one night on pay-tv. Luckily, we caught it at the very beginning, and the opening credits barely got started, so we got to see it in its entirety. Also, luckily for me, I knew almost nothing about the film storywise, and what I thought I knew about the film, I would later find out, was erroneous. It didn't matter, that didn't ruin my enjoyment of the film... or non-enjoyment, as the case may have been.

Here's the usual SPOILER WARNING, which I think is important to give in a film like this, whose impact relies heavily on certain unexpected plot-points. Read no further if you haven't seen it: a couple loses their two children in a car crash, and barely has the time to deal with the loss when the husband is killed as well, shortly afterward. We follow the husband into the afterlife, where he is presented with what is essentially a paradise, and is re-united with his son and daughter. However, he soon finds out that his wife on earth has committed suicide in grief, and for that she has been sentenced to an eternity in hell. He quickly journeys to the underworld, accompanied by a guide and his son, to see his wife and, perhaps, save her.

It's an intriguing plot indeed, but I had two major problems with it.

First of all, we have to accept as fact the film's depiction of the afterlife. This would normally have been no problem to me if it weren't for the fact that the presentation given is terribly corny and heavily Western-religious influenced. I would expect a grandiose task of presenting a version of the afterlife to be handled with some originality at least, or perhaps something would be there that would seem new, exciting or surprising! But, no, we get the standard heaven-and-hell structure, with heaven depicted as a world as perfect as you can imagine it, and hell populated by tormented souls who wallow in the mud like something stolen out of classic literature. It's been done, and it certainly wasn't interesting.

But that was a minor quibble compared to the main point of the plot itself: that we are watching a man whose love is so strong that he can do the impossible: raise his wife from the depths of hell. OK. I see that the movie is about this all-powerful, moving, conquering aspect of love. However, I am not convinced that I should just be happening to watch the one couple in the history of the universe who has succeeded in beating the afterlife system. The son makes two things very clear to the father: that suicide condemns one to hell forever, and that no one has ever come up to paradise from hell. Now, I assume that both heaven and hell here are populated by the souls of the history of the universe; that's a long time and a lot of people. And this couple... this one here, in the movie, these two who are really no more special than neither you nor me... happens to be the ones who beat hell? The husband makes the sacrifice of pure love, and that alone was good enough to take his wife away from eternal damnation. I suppose those eternal rules aren't that strict. By the time the ending arrived, the whole thing seemed terribly contrived, and left a bad taste in my mouth. It's like someone tacked the big Hollywood sign, in big lights, on to the ending.

In my opinion, the movie turned to be narrow-minded. Not only did it present a hackneyed version of life-after-death, it tried to make us believe that the couple we were watching was the only exceptional couple in the known universe worth preserving eternal happiness for, nevermind the sufferings and love of others. The only saving graces of the movie were the very impressive special effects, and, perhaps, its rather humble goal of simply being a strong love story. But the love story, in the end, was just big and showy, not strong. The movie is probably worth seeing for the controversy, and I don't think it's terrible... I just happen to agree with the naysayers on this one.