Howdy ho! My name's Jim and I'm a student, so of course I have plenty of free time to waste, and I s...
Howdy ho! My name's Jim and I'm a student, so of course I have plenty of free time to waste, and I spend a lot of it right here. Look, there I am, right over there, reading an opinion! Give us a wave! Eh, whatever. Anyways, hope you like what I've got ...
Member since:13.01.2001
Reviews:41
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It may be getting on a bit now, but Robocop is still one of the best sc-fi films in a long while. Based in a pretty standard sort of near-future, corporate society setting, this film just smacks of 80s consumerism. Just look at the central premise of the film; huge corporation virtually owns the city of Detroit, and sees the employees as their posessions to be done with as they like.
The film's plot is a pretty standard sort of revenge film, with a bit of a technological twist. In one sentence; cop gets killed and turned into cyborg, regains memory and goes out to get the guys who killed him. Doesn't sound like much, but the way it's exectuted is amazing. Surprisingly for an action film, you actually start to genuinely care for the lead characters, and really develop a strong dislike for the bad guys.
Plus, this is a Paul Verhoeven film, and you know what that means. Blood. Lots of it. And miscellaneous gore, as well. Oh yeah, and lots of guns, too. The fact that Robocop is a virtually indestructible machine does not go unnoticed, as various people unload enough munitions to level a small country at him. The effect on his performance as a policemn of his various aspects, both technological and human, are also well covered, giving you a very good all-round impression of the character as a whole.
But the best thing is the special effects. Robocop was probably one of the last real big-budget effects films before the advent of CGI, and it really shows. The effects shots are all done with state-of-the-art techniques by some of the best guys in the business; everything from scale miniatures and stop-motion animation to prosthetics and make-up effects are used all over the place, with amazingly good results. The effects still look amazing even by today's standards, and in many places, the shots are lent an extra air of reality that the harshness of CGI effects is often lacking. One of the big disppointments is that probably the best effect shot in the entire film (the finale to Murphy's decidedly grisly death) has been cut from the version you've probably seen. If you can get hold of the director's cut version, it's truly worth your while.
All in all, a brilliant film all round in its own right, and an even better film if you're interested in seeing a brilliant example of how special effects should really be done.
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Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Production Year: 1977 - Action/Adventure - Director: Clint Eastwood - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring:Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney
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Feb 7th, 2001
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