Robocop is a tale of corruption and dehumanization. The film examines what it means to suck the humanity out of something, replace it with a mix of technology and greed, and witness the grim results when what’s left takes hold. It is an action-packed polemic against prioritizing private profits above the public good, escalation above restraint, and lead and steel above flesh and blood.
But as I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, it’s also a paean to the resilience of the human soul, unquenched and undeterred by whatever self-serving, nest-feathering malevolence may have been permeating corporate boardrooms in the 1980s. OCP, an evil company that wants to replace regular cops with robotic enforcers, tries to erase the identity of the man who has become its latest product, so that he‘ll be a better tool and a better soldier. And yet, the man’s connections, to his partner and his family, reawaken and sustain him despite the company’s concerted efforts to stamp both out.
This type of thematic heft gives Robocop a force that so many of its fellow eighties actioners lack. That’s director Paul Verhoeven’s gift — the ability to marry lurid genre thrills and over-the-top action on the one hand, with something a little more piercing and, at times, even disturbing for those willing to unscrew the proverbial faceplate and see what’s lurking underneath.
He also reliably finds the sweet spot between realism and exaggeration. Make no mistake, Robocop is a maximalist film, full of Grand Guignol fights, preening villains, and heightened emotions. You could easily clock the movie as completely lacking in subtlety. But a major part of what makes the film work is Verhoeven and his team’s ability to blend 1980s ostentatiousness with 1970s rawness. There is grit and grime beneath the four color world on display, and that keeps the film grounded, even when it veers into futuristic technology and dystopian extremes.
This is the inevitable evolution of Alexa.
Much of that stems from the film’s showy-yet-effective cinematography. Director of photography, Jost Vacano, evokes empathy for a seemingly-emotionless killing machine by nigh-literally putting the audience behind his eyes. Vacano composes several key shots with Robocop or other important figures in close-ups, while some eye-catching tableau looms in the background, making human expressions the images that drive the film despite the dystopic tumult. He and editor Frank J. Urioste prove themselves masters of the reveal, whether it’s for the title character, the hulking but infantile ED-209, or Murphy’s reconstructed visage. In each instance, slow build to these reveals, makes all of them that much more impactful.
Those moments are vital because the heart of the movie emerges from the failures and contradictions inherent in these figures. Robocop himself represents the militarization of law enforcement, a one-man army designed to be an upgrade over his fleshy counterparts. They, by contrast, have too many inconvenient demands and cannot take nearly the same level of punishment, making them less useful as cogs in the OCP corporate machine. But as a tradeoff, Robocop proceeds with utter brutality. He does not merely stop crime, but acts like a soldier in an urban war zone. That approach lends itself to plenty of blood-pumping action but also carries with it an implicit critique of the way OCP programmed its automated officer and the violence with which he disposes of the citizens who violate his prime directives.
ED-209, on the other hand, represents another of the film’s potent themes — a misplaced faith in technology. This imposing, stop-motion animated automaton is also meant to be a leap forward in both policing and war. But its mistakes cost lives. It’s child-like when it stumbles down a flight of stairs, only to kick and seemingly cry for help. These images — along with news bulletins about misfiring defense satellites and Murphy himself breaking through his programming — show sincere skepticism about technological solutions to human problems and highlight the price of our missteps when trading one for the other.
But it’s the film’s last reveal, of the mortal face beneath Robocop’s dehumanizing mask, that proves to be the clincher of the movie’s ideas. So many of the film’s villains, from the executives jockeying for position to the amoral criminals they collude with, treat human life as though it didn’t matter. The boardroom vultures in particular are a cutting caricature of Ronald Reagan’s America, touting public services denuded into corporate money-making schemes while a city suffers.
What could be better for patrolling at night than a black visor?
These same callous but well-dressed ghouls position Murphy as their guinea pig, surreptitiously having him sign away his rights and become their property. The implication is that this is all part of a larger scheme. It involves funding thieves and murderers to conjure up a criminal crisis that only big business can step in to solve, along the path toward lucrative gentrification. Robocop frames that move toward privatization — driving out city services and the civil servants who deliver them — as draining away the soul of modern Detroit.
But the executives’ mistake, amid such byzantine plots, was underestimating the indelible humanity within the company’s faux-optimized systems, meant to serve stockholders rather than the people. However much OCP tried to stamp out Murphy’s all-too-human spirit, it couldn’t erase his trauma, his grief over his family, or his desire to wreak vengeance on those who would inflict such a terrible curse on a man or a community.
The turn in the film’s story hinges on Murphy’s awakening and personal course correction. When Robocop removes his facemask, the act symbolizes the fragile-but-determined human being beneath it rising and reasserting himself. When his partner, Officer Lewis, physically recalibrates his targeting unit, it posits the necessity of human intervention in these mechanized processes. When Murphy turns on his masters, he embodies the unpredictable elements of the human soul, which defy the sort of craven, heartless projects that Bob Morton and Dick Jones and even Clarence Boddicker seek to impose on the world. The resurrected Murphy is a harbinger of these men’s sins crashing back down upon them, in Verhoeven’s characteristically brutal and bombastic tones.
There is the film’s central irony. Robocop was designed to root out corruption and dispense dispassionate justice. OCP and its various goons intended that to mean a quick extermination of whatever doesn’t serve their interests, leaving only fodder for smiling bits of P.R. and further rent-seeking ploys. Instead, Robocop inadvertently achieves exactly what he was designed to — wiping out the untold corruption that led to his creation, but only when his essential humanity reasserts itself, and the man within the machine is born again.
