The first “RoboCop”, which was directed by Paul Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct”), is written more like a satire than a real action picture by delivering countless laughs. However, it does actually provide some reasonable action scenes as well.
Set in a brutal, futuristic Detroit where the police force is run by a corporation named the OCP, officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is violently gunned down by criminals. He is then turned into a law-enforcing cyborg, named RoboCop. He is cleaning up the streets but then he becomes haunted by images of his old life and sets out on a mission of vengeance against the gangsters who shot him and a rogue OCP employee.
The RoboCop character talks like he’s a classic swashbuckling hero defending a lady’s honour but the fact he’s a robot with no real personality makes him very amusing to watch; he’s a memorable film hero with his quotable dialog. The bad guys are pretty much standard for an action movie, I like the main bad guy played by Ronny Cox (“Total Recall”) the most. The special effects for the faulty, law-enforcing droid ED-209 are really impressive to say the least. Despite having a scene where he guns down an innocent man because of a sensory problem, this robot is played for laughs.
The best gag in “RoboCop” involves a tv ad for a ‘family’ board game named “Nuke ‘Em” where you destroy other countries so this is evidence that “RoboCop” is aware it is a funny movie. “RoboCop” isn’t a perfect movie by any means but it is a perfectly silly movie but it’s slightly more subtle than your average spoof and that’s where the movie works best. I like the action scenes, the self-aware humour and the RoboCop character so I think it’s worth checking out (the sequels and tv shows you can definitely do without though).