RoboCop (1987): Corporate-sponsored ultraviolent satire
1987 • Paul Verhoeven • 1.85:1 • Jump to Gallery ↓
Paul Verhoeven‘s RoboCop follows a Detroit police officer who is killed in the line of duty and subsequently revived as a cybernetic law enforcement unit operated by a powerful corporation. As he carries out his new duties, fragments of his former identity gradually resurface, creating a conflict between programmed obedience and human memory.
Despite being a high-concept sci-fi blockbuster about a cyborg police officer released at the height of 1980s action cinema, the film is one of the most scathing satires of the culture that created it. Frequently cutting to fictional television commercials and deadpan news broadcasts advertising dystopian nuclear war board games or providing upbeat coverage of global crises, RoboCop frames corporate greed as the cancer of society in this dystopian, crime-ridden Detroit, where the most human character has literally become the mechanical tool of its corporate overlord.
Verhoeven brilliantly balances jaw-dropping, graphic violence with a wicked, deadpan sense of humour, using and breaking the rules of the genre to deliver a sci-fi milestone that refuses to be what it should have become.
Technical Specs:
- The Story: After a police officer is brutally killed in the line of duty, he is rebuilt as a corporate-controlled cyborg and returns to the streets to confront crime, identity, and the machinery that transformed him.
- Actors: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, Robert DoQui, Ray Wise, Felton Perry, Paul McCrane, Jesse D. Goins.
- Director: Paul Verhoeven
- Year: 1987
- Cinematographer: Jost Vacano
- Origin: American Cinema
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
- Genre: Sci-Fi / Crime / Action
