RoboCop

This movie has everything: absurd action, ruthless satire, and interesting filmmaking. I recently watched Predator and I was disappointed with some of the action shortcuts where they just shot aimlessly into an area and had tons of explosions. There was no action wasted in this movie, every set piece had a visceral payoff with excessive splatters and shredding. You also get the cackling maniac villains and the no nonsense super cop that feels like a comic book. Extra shout out for the toxic waste set piece because that shit rules. Watching this in 2025, the satire is both cartoonishly exaggerated and doesn’t go far enough. The talking points of the Chris Miller hostage scene could have been pulled out of a MAGA press conference. These gigantic corporations who cause problems and then solve them for double profit just need an AI paint job to make it into 2025. It kind of falls into a satire trap where it shows us this extreme side of an idea to highlight the bad of it, but then what? A champion of good doesn’t break out of this system, our protagonist gets his justice with extreme violence. Verhoeven clearly doesn’t shy away from the idea that he can show us ideologically flawed characters without endorsing those ideas (i.e. Starship Troopers). Just to wrap up on the filmmaking. There’s lots of little flourishes that make it interesting to watch as a film, not just an action movie. Right away I noticed the walking transitions between two conversations in the same room (both the police station and the corporate boardroom). There’s also the little things done on the robo-HUD and all the porno vid scenes (I’d by that for a dollar) Oh, and huge shoutout to the fucking robot motion acting. It rules so hard