When I was a kid, I loved action movies (and still do). One of my favorites was Robocop, the heart-warming film about a cop who gets a nice cyborg upgrade after being shot on duty. He comes back and becomes a supercop who takes down the worst in “Old Detroit.” It was on the other night. Holy crap, it is really bad.
1) It opens with a newscast where the reporters are smiling and joking as they talk about a gang that’s shot and killed 31 officers. I’ll bet the cops wouldn’t really care about that or drop everything while a murderous gang of cop killers is running around. “We’ll get to that, right after we stop these damn jaywalkers roaming our streets!”
2) The private company that runs the police department tests a new variation of a robot cop that has no ability to arrest and detain anyone. It just takes care of crime by gunning down criminals with machine guns. Also, it malfunctions immediately and murders one of the businessmen during the presentation. There are NO repercussions. In fact, the CEO is annoyed and yells at anyone that offers to help. I remember once when I was at a staff sales meeting and a robot murdered our assistant district manager. It was so annoying – we had to delay lunch by 10 minutes to clean up the body!
3) Officer Murphy gets shot by the cop killer gang by six criminals at close range with shotguns, including a headshot through the brain. He lives. Not all the way, but long enough to be put into a cyborg. Of course, he and his partner wouldn’t have been in trouble, but they chose not to wait on backup against the six criminals. His partner would’ve been able to help, but she decided to snap her bubble gum when approaching one the thugs and got kicked off a ledge. Smooth.
4) The cops only carry handguns…except when they are ordered to shoot Robocop, then they have a full military arsenal. He would’ve been killed by the machine gun robot I mentioned earlier, but it got taken out by a staircase. That’s right – stairs.
I then realized I was being critical of a movie with late 80’s special effects about a robotic super cop in Detroit that requires zero programming or training before they release him into the public. At least he kicks some serious ass while all this is going on.