Good Business is Where You'll Find It

Back to wrap up about Robocop:

- Great character actors make anything better. Robocop is full of them and better yet, gives them ample opportunity to play each part to the hilt. The result is a movie world filled with figures who are menacing, heroic, funny and frightening and don't ring false.
My favorite example of this is Clarence Boddicker and his gang. Look up Ray Wise and Paul McCrane but best of all, check out Kurtwood Smith as Clarence. Who ever saw such a total badass who wore glasses and had a wimpy sounding name? Smith just kicks butt as a brilliantly vicious crime boss. What's my favorite Clarence moment? While there are many great bits- like when r standing down a pissed off business partner ("Guns! Guns! Guns!") or explaining his philosophy to Officer Murphy ("Cops don't like me. So I don't like cops.") my favorite moment comes withing seconds of Clarence's first screen appearance: His fury and heartlessness explodes onto his own men. In the middle of a getaway with cops in pursuit, Boddicker orders Emil to slow down the van. Emil respectfully questions this order, "Slow down?! Are you crazy?" And then Clarence goes ballistic. He yells "JUST F***ING DO IT!" and hauls off and kicks Emil as he curses him out. The kick always gets me. Clarence is so furious and so crazy that he freakin' kicks Emil since a slap just isn't enough. It is no surprise when a minute later Clarence creates a diversion by hurling one of his goons onto the hood of the pursuing police car.

-Great satire. The media breaks are filled with some of the funniest spoofs of American culture. This includes the need for quick information above in-depth coverage, inefficient automobiles, the entertainment of war (Nuke 'Em another another quality family game from Butler Brothers), and the fact that everything is for sale- even hearts- this last ad subversively shows that people can freely purchase mechanical hearts before the movie focuses on the cyborg's quest to remember what made it human.

-Great action sequences illustrate how efficient Robocop is at stopping crime with the maximum force possible. The shootout in the drug warehouse allows Robo and Clarence's gang to shoot it out and it is then that Robo starts using some of Murphy's fancy gunplay. The climactic chase in the steel mill is even better and mixes a car chase with gunplay, construction equipment and toxic waste in unforgettable fashion.

-Timelessness. Released in 1987, Robocop has aged fantastically since its vision of the future is not reliant on elaborate production design so that everything from the robots to the skyscrapers looks quite plausible twenty years later. Thankfully there are no hover cars or sleek domed cities or complex science fiction creations beyond Robo himself and ED-209, his mechanical nemesis. Robocop continues to be fun to watch because it still depicts a future that we can imagine building for ourselves.