I can still remember being allowed in my teens to see the first Robocop. It's a brilliant film, sure its graphically violent, but its black comedy themes of corporate enterprise generating profits at the expense of dehumanising and destroying peoples lives is still very much true today.

Murphy's journey to regain his humanity is often touching and heartfelt, and in striking contrast to the acts of violence the character perpetrates in his pursuit of justice. I guess there is 'justifiable' violence in the world. Peter Weller does a great job communicating his struggle to regain who he once was, the loss of his life and family, through layers of prosthetics and a bulky suit. Nancy Allen is also excellent as Murphy's tough partner Lewis. And who could have suspected that Kurtwood Smith who plays such a horrible bad guy in this could later go on to be hilarious in a comedy series.

I hear a remake is in the works somewhere down the track. I honestly don't know why Hollywood feels it has to remake a film that is perfect just the way it is. No doubt they'll foist some PG-13 piece of crap upon us. I'd rather they did started a fresh trilogy of stories with the character and made it an R-rated, than do another PG-13 kiddie friendly movie like Robocop 3 that completely misses the point of this character. Mind you we've seen a lot of this politically-correct crap lately - Aliens vs. Predator anyone?

The picture and sound quality in the DVD is pretty good considering the age of the movie. I hear an HD release of this film is too be offered soon, and it would be interesting to see how much better that print is. There are some extras about the making of the film, behind the scenes etc that are quite interesting, especially some of the director's comments about the film.

Plot Synopsis:

Detroit is a city in a bad state - crime is rampant, violent gangs roam the streets, and its not being helped by the large corporation at its heart, Omni Consumer Products. With plans to tear down a large section of the city and build a new corporate run Delta City, OCP is doing nothing to discourage the violence and lawlessness. When their plan to sell and deploy military robots, Enforcement Droids 209, go wrong, a backup plan is ordered - Robocop. OCP manipulates good cops into situations where they could be killed in order to provide material for their project. Alex Murphy is recently transfered to the worst Metro Police Dept in the city, and on his first day is brutally killed by Clarence Boddicker and his gang.

OCP take the barely living remains of Murphy and rebuild him into Robocop, erasing his memories, and deploying him as an unstoppable anti-crime machine, mostly as a PR exercise. Murphy is reunited with his partner Lewis who reawakens his memories, and leads him on a search to reclaim his humanity. In the process, he hunts down Boddicker and his gang to bring them to justice for his death, and uncovers corruption leading back all the way to OCP.