Robocop (1987) Dir: Paul Verhoeven
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Arguably director Paul Verhoeven's most iconic film, this is an 80's classic which I knew I had to watch at some point. When the opportunity came about, I was pretty excited. I expected some good action sequences and a lot of very cheesy 80's fun.
Some of the physical effects, such as the bullet wounds and prosthetics, looked pretty great, in my opinion. However, the stop motion looked incredibly cheesy - it was certainly dated by today's standards, and that's being kind.
I don't think I was quite ready for how damn gory the film was, but I thought the explicitness added some realism to the action, and added a fair bit of shock factor at how far some of it went. As I mentioned before though, the effects used for the violence looked really good.
The story mixed a solid revenge arc with some classic science fiction fun. I quite enjoyed the news bulletin style opening; I thought it worked quite well to establish the story and its characters. The one-liners were very awkward and cheesy, but it was in-keeping with the silly 80's vibes.
Peter Weller was fairly good in the film's leading role, though I wouldn't say I found him to be exceptional. His more human moments were well acted, and I quite liked how he balanced the two sides of his role, but some of his performance still felt rather wooden.
I thought that Nancy Allen was quite decent in her key supporting role. She had a down-to-earth feel to her which helped ground the story and Weller's undeniably silly protagonist. Her acting wasn't perfect or anything, but she did the job more than well enough.
Of the supporting cast, I thought the main standouts were Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Robert DoQui, Miguel Ferrer and Ray Wise. Of these, Smith stood out the most; he made for a fairly good, if a little goofy, antagonist character.
Overall, I quite enjoyed this sci-fi action film - it was very cheesy, surprisingly violent and a whole load of fun. I can definitely imagine myself watching this one again in the future. It's safe to say that it was much better than the modern remake too.
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