Tweet
Released by: MGM/Fox
Released on: 10/5/2010
Director: Various
Cast: Various
Year: Various
Purchase From Amazon
The Movies:
In 1987, during the height of eighties hysteria, the now defunct Orion Pictures unleashed a new hero of sorts emerged onto screens across the continent. Part man, part machine, but all cop, Robocop met with huge success and spawned two theatrical sequels, a television series, a toy line, a video game, and a comic book series.
Robocop
Set in the Detroit of the not too distant future (which was actually Dallas - but don't tell anyone!), crime is rampant. The city is run by a huge corporation called OCP (which stands for Omni Consumer Products) and nothing gets done without its say so. To combat the rising crime statistics, OCP develops a completely automated super cop robot entitled the ED-209. They've pumped tons of money into this project and hope to sell it across the country to other large cities. Unfortunately, the test model has a serious malfunction and tends to open fire on innocent people.
When an honest cop named Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty, OCP sees a great way provide a quick fix to their crime problem when they meld his body with that of a robot to create Robocop. The project works out great and Robocop does a fast and efficient job of cleaning up the streets. Unfortunately for him and his partner, Officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), they do such a good job of it that Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith in his finest performance ever), a local criminal, aims to take them down no matter what the cost.
The first and best of the three films is also the most violent. Particularly in its uncut form (which is how it is presented here), the gore and bloodshed on display in this film is pretty intense. It's also very over the top and satirical, much like the script itself is. Part sci-fi b-movie and part social satire, Robocop totally hit in the right place at the right time. In the decade that gave us Rambo - First Blood Part 2 and Invasion U.S.A., Robocop stands out because of its darkly humorous script and the terrific deadpan performance from Weller in the title role. Director Paul Verhoeven (who can be seen dancing in the seen where Leon is arrested!), making his North American debut with this film, shows his bizarre sense of humor and penchant for bizarre violence (the body count hits at least thirty by the time the end credits role) can meld together seamlessly with this effort, and the movie still stands up as an immensely entertaining and over the top comic book come to life.
Robocop 2
Helmd this second time out by director Irvin Kershner (of The Empire Strikes Back), Robocop 2 finds Murphy back in action on the streets of Detroit (which is actually Dallas, TX once again), one year after the events of the first film. Crime is back on the rise again, and OCP plans to totally demolish the city as it stands today, kick out the riff raff, and build an entirely new city in its place called Delta City.
There's also a new drug problem plaguing Detroit in the form of Nuke, a highly addictive and highly dangerous narcotic being peddled faster than the cops can take the dealers down. OCP needs to get this problem under control and fast, so they investigate the possibilities of building a few more automated police units that can outdo Robocop. Cain, one of the Nuke drug lords, has his men capture Robocop and disassemble him. He's put back together by OCP when he's found later, but he's been reprogrammed to be less violent and more talkative. Meanwhile, OCP has been experimenting with test subjects for their new combat police unit. When the test subject, a former drug addict, goes rogue, it's up to Robocop and to take him down and save the day.
Robocop 2 gets most of it right and is a pretty solid sequel in its own right. Verhoeven's sense of satire is missed but Weller is great once again as the lead and it's nice to see Nancy Allen in action alongside him. There's still a lot of great black humor in the film to keep things interesting and they didn't tone down the violence from the first film much at all and the effects are just as good if not better than those onscreen in the first film. Comic book writer/artist Frank Miller, who wrote the screenplay, can be seen in a quick cameo as the chemist making the Nuke for Cain. Too bad he wasn't talked into a commentary track for this release as his screenplay was changed drastically - and recently released in comic book form as Frank Miller's Robocop by Avatar Press.
Robocop 3
Sadly, Peter Weller didn't resume the title role for this third film in the series, which once again finds OCP meddling with their idea of destroying old Detroit and replacing it with Delta City. Unfortunately for OCP, the many denizens of Detroit don't like the idea of having to give up their homes ad being bought out by a faceless corporation.
When this problem starts to become a serious thorn in their side, OCP hires a merciless gang of soldiers for hire to drive the populace out so that they can tear down the old city. When an underground rebellions starts up to stop OCP, Robocop is called in and he his human side begins to wrestle with his robot side as he is forced to figure out where his allegiances lie.
Fred Decker, who had previously directed the excellent Night Of The Creeps turns in the weakest of the series. To his credit, there are some interesting ideas in the film and it is hard to carry on the franchise when you don't have Peter Weller in the suit (he was replaced for this film by Robert John Burke of Richard Stanley's Dust Devil). But this PG rated film has most of the over the top carnage that made the first two films so much fun washed out of it in a much kid friendlier manner. Maybe the producers hoped that by toning down the film they could get a younger (and therefore larger) audience into theaters, but sadly it worked against them and the weakest of the three films from an entertainment-oriented perspective was also the weakest of the three films at the box office.
Video/Audio/Extras:
All three films are presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition 1.85.1 widescreen transfers. How do they look? Not so hot, really. The first film shows slightly better detail than its standard definition counterpart but there's a fair bit of dirt and grit on screen and some compression artifacts. The sequels fair a bit better but you can't help but think they could and should have looked better than they do here. All three films look better than standard DVDs do, but honestly, that's about as complimentary as you can get here.
All three films have very active DTS-HD 5.1 soundtracks with optional subtitles available in English, French and Spanish. Alternate French and Spanish language options are also provided in standard definition lossy mixes of varying quality. The audio is fine overall, showing some good channel separation here and there and providing a cleaner, clearer and more powerful sounding listening experience than past releases have offered. They're not on part with the latest and greatest Hollywood blockbuster but they sound decent enough, if a bit unremarkable by the standards of the format.
Considering how much bonus material has been created for the various releases of the first film over the years, it's disappointing to see that its Blu-ray debut includes only a theatrical trailer. The second film includes two theatrical trailers, the third film a single theatrical trailer. Aside from menus and chapter stops, that's all you get here.
The Final Word:
This is, to be blunt, a pretty half-assed set. The lack of extras is a big reason you'll want to hold on to one of the standard definition special edition releases, and the transfers and lossless audio mixes aren't so great that you won't be able to live without it. We are offered an upgrade here over what was available before, but not a substantial one. The movies themselves hold up well, particularly the first film, and they deserved better than this.