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Robocop 3

Robocop 3

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The worst of the series, but not one of the worst films ever
Review: "RoboCop" (1987) was a hard action picture with an edge and a heart. It had a strong sense of everything--brains, heart, social satire, and wit, probably all thanks to Paul Verhoeven, the eccentric Dutch man responsible for "Total Recall" and "Basic Instinct."

"RoboCop 2" (1990) lost the heart but still had the violent edge. It seemed somewhat geared towards children, the plot was tired and recycled, the violence still packed a punch but lacked the seriousness and dramatic flair of the first film. In a sense, all humanity shining through the RoboCop character from the first film was gone.

"RoboCop 3" (1993) has none of the above. It has no heart, it has no brains, it has no sly social puns, and it has no hard violence. It's goofy and stupid. Over-the-top and obnoxious. Some qualites are redeemable. Most are not. It's undoubtedly the worst of the series.

Filmed in 1991 and delayed for two years due to film company Orion's pending bankruptcy, "RoboCop 3" centers around Murphy, a.k.a. RoboCop (Robert John Burke) joining forces with evicted squatters who are opposing Omni Consumer Products, the new conglomerate company running Detroit, which is kindly referred to as the homeless citizens as Opposing Capitalist Pigs.

OCP is no longer run by The Old Man (Daniel O'Herlihy), but rather The CEO (Rip Torn), a character played over-the-top for laughs that never come; he is in fact a sort of subtle summary of the entire movie. He is in cahoots with the Japanese to throw citizens of futuristic Detroit out of their homes and onto the street so that he can level their homes and build big money-making skyscrapers.

RoboCop doesn't like this one bit, and after seeing a lone child named Nikko (Remy Ryan) run across a street and into the arms of squatters, he decides it's time to protect the innocent and delete his fourth directive, which instructs him to not oppose a member of OCP. After Lewis (Nancy Allen) is killed my a corrupt OCP employee, he swears to take vengeance and uphold the law.

What a digression the "RoboCop" series has made! It started as a biting social satire, a hard action film with loads of wit, and an emotional tale with subtle hints at humanity and the warnings of regenreating the dead. It was "Frankenstein" and "The Terminator" intertwined into one gigantic, non-stop, thrill-packed rollercoaster ride.

Watching "RoboCop 3" is like trying to focus on a Saturday morning cartoon serial with an invincible hero defeating uncountable foes amidst a very, very unfocused backdrop. It's hard to do. Co-characters extended in this film were made clearer in the first installment when they were given less time on screen. Johnson (Felton Perry), the black man who gave Robo the thumbs up at the end of the first film, is now partly a bad guy. He was supposed to be a fairly good guy in the first two. What's happened to him? I doubt the movie cares much.

Peter Weller, who said making the first two films in this trilogy was the worst experience of his acting career (the suit was heavy and hot, shedding some number of pounds off his body on a daily basis), has left the series for more attractive projects, leaving John Robert Burke to fill in his shoes. Burke is okay in the suit, but his voice sounds too robotic when he speaks, lacking the monotone calmness that Weller possessed without any type of digital alteration. Weller's voice sounded like a man who was fused with gadgetry and somewhat hidden underneath an alternate identity. Burke just sounds like a robot, leaving all sense of humanity at the door. And with the mask off, his facial features look splattered with too much makeup and plastic, probably an ill-fated effort to cover up Weller's disappearance. It's not a biggie, as RoboCop himself is barely in this film at all.

Yes, that's right, RoboCop is not really the subject of this movie at all. Perhaps because Weller left they decided to keep RoboCop off frame for as long as possible. He is introduced some fifteen minutes into the film during a heated (and ridiculous) car chase, he gets injured and disappears throughout most the film, comes back for a bit, then saves the day. It's like when they tried to cover up Crispin Glover's absence in "Back to the Future Part II"--only Zemeckis knew how to do it right. Fred Zekker, the director of "RoboCop 3," does not.

Paul Verhoeven was (and I say "was" because he is now a has-been) a great director. He got away with over-the-top action because he had a way of making it brutal, gleeful and downright excellent, while managing to insert levels of humanity (remember Quaid's background in "Total Recall"? The flashback sequences in "RoboCop"?). Zekker's over-the-top style is different. Very different. Zekker is the type of director who should be in the cartoon business, not the movie business. It's obvious that he knows how to make adventure serials with over-the-top childish blow-'em-up action, long passages of cheesy dialogue between cardboard characters, and anticlimatic battles. Now it's time for him to prove that he can show the decent amount of courtesy to make a satisfying conclusion to a great movie. He has, in essence, failed.

"RoboCop 3" is rated PG-13 for language, childish violence and idiotic sequences of stupid battles.

Footnote: A complaint of mine in "RoboCop 2" was that the RoboCop suit had been remodeled as a type of overweight blueberry as opposed to the sleek silver armor seen in the original. They've got the armor back in "RC3." They don't have the direction skills. If it's not one thing, it's another...*sighs*.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Give us back our Fred Dekker !
Review: *Robocop III* is not a great movie: at best, it is a decent B-Movie, a watchable but ultimately derivative action flick, with its recycled music and recycled villains (among whom the always welcome ED-209, itself copied from mecha-designs for the Japanese TV series *Robotech*). It is often silly, in that way peculiar to the US comics that aspire to «high-brow» status by having a «social[ist] message» (in this case, a criticism of «corporate America» and the «oppressive capitalist pigs» of the ultimate U.S. trust, aptly called «Omni Consumer Products».) It is often silly too in its action scenes, which tend to go for effect to the detriment of good sense, as when Robocop shoots its way through the roof of his police car when he could just as well have opened the door. As for the optical special effects of Robo's flying scenes (sic), they are rather pathetic.

This said, the movie is worth watching for the camera work alone. I am not sure how much of it was due to Fred Dekker himself, and how much to his excellent photographer, Gary B. Kibbe (John Carpenter's associate on his more recent movies), but there is in the handling of the camera a mastery that really make me regret this was Dekker's last movie and he chose instead to concentrate on screenwriting: I am convinced that given time, the man might have grown to the stature of a Brian De Palma, though his spirit is closer to John Carpenter's.

Co-written by comic-book star Frank Miller (who is considered to have «regenerated» superhero comics by making them darker, and who coauthored the disastrous first Robocop sequel), *Robocop III* veers away from the noir «realism» of the first two instalments and goes for a less violent, campy tone, full of references to the pop culture of the eighties and nineties (with a Japanese robot called «Otomo» and a punk outlaw that looks like a caricature of Romero from *Escape from New York*.) The acting is broad (almost sitcom-ish) and the presence of a cute, gifted kid will turn off the purported audience of the movie, who in their haste to be considered as adults tend to despise everything that reminds them just how close they still are to being children.

The ideal audience for this movie are perhaps those who were my age (i.e. about fourteen) when Snake Plissken hit the big screen- but then again, if they still remember the movie, they might resent Robocop's last line, which is directly borrowed from Carpenter and Castle's excellent script.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I DESPERATELY miss Peter Weller
Review: *There. Now that my title has drawn your attention, I think I'll get down to the review.*

Review: Wow...words cannot express how awful this movie is. It's so crass and commercialised, no wonder [it's so bad]. The main problem that I have with this movie is that it goes against what the first Robocop movie promised it would never do: sell-out (and I don't mean "sell-out" in a good way, I mean "God, this director is milking this franchise for all it's worth" kind of "sell-out"). Stick with the first Robocop movie, people. Please. You'll be doing yourself a huge favor if you do. The first Robocop films had a certain gritty charm to them; an anarchic and veridic viewpoint that depicted violence as a means to show the truth. Sure, some scenes are shocking; they get your attention don't they? That's what they're supposed to do. And if they don't catch your attention, how can show you the truth. When a movie catches your attention the way this first Robocop caught mine, it can be called only one thing: Brutal honesty.

Oh, and by the way, don't say I didn't warn you that Peter Weller isn't in this one. When I went to see this in the theatre, I was upset to find that Peter wasn't in this one, but after seeing it, I'm glad he decided not to do this one. I did still miss him, though.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This is Painfully SH*T!!!
Review: After the high quality of the first two films there's only one way to go...downhill and fast.
This film put plain and simply is pants! A crappy japanese cyborg is created as the new nemesis for robocop, & it looks exactly like a human.
A piss-take of the first two films rolled into one, what a disaster...ignore this film.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This is Painfully SH*T!!!
Review: After the high quality of the first two films there's only one way to go...downhill and fast.
This film put plain and simply is pants! A crappy japanese cyborg is created as the new nemesis for robocop, & it looks exactly like a human.
A piss-take of the first two films rolled into one, what a disaster...ignore this film.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Boring, lifeless and feeble.
Review: After the okay-ish Part 2, this sequel plunges the series into the depths of diminishing returns. The...er, plot, involves an evil Japanese organization who are determined to take over the city with the help of some decidedly uninspiring robot ninjas.

Souless, tame, humdrum waste of time and money which seemingly relies on constant flashbacks to the first (and far superior) Robocop film. If you haven't seen any Robocop movies then see the first one instead of this. If, on the other hand, you've seen the first Robocop film, then be content with that. You won't find anything worthwhile in this trash.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Big NO
Review: Although this has a better story than Robocop 2, there still isn't anything special about it. Totally forgettable. Appealing only to 6yr. olds who have real low attention spans. It also lacked violence, the key ingredient from the first two.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This movie kinda stunk up the house.
Review: Awe man... Why Anne? She was kinda pretty! Any ways.... so the Robocop name was kinda wasted on this one. Although the robot ninjas were kinda nifty and it was a nice little addition to bring back ED209. I though he was the dopest of all the enemies in Robocop. This title was a little to kiddy for my taste and you can kinda tell from the sudden drop from the usual "R" rating in a Robocop movie to the sudden "pg13". It wasn't a good move on their part to make it appeal more to children than to adults. It should have been kept a mature film.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This movie dropped !
Review: Come on ! Rated PG-13 !? This is why the movie was stupid ! They made Robocop act funny and dumb. What happened to Peter Weller the orginal Robocop !? The story in this movie is lame but the only credit I give this movie is the fact that Robo has the new weapon which connects to his hand and the flight pack.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: without a badge
Review: he's back to stop chaos, corruption and civil war. Interational corporate gaint Omni Consumer Coporation (O.C.P) has transformed the city's last remaining neighbourhoods into virtual war zones to make way for the construction of its long planned, gleaming metropolis, Delta city. As the buildings burn and the streets become ruled by armed commandoes, hundreds of innocent citizens hold out for more than a miracle.
They need a hero...
packing some serious hi-tech hardware, the cyborg supercop is back with a cause and a conscience as robocop goes renegade to save the ravaged city from total destruction.
robocop 3 half man. Half machine. Full metal muscle. This time our superhero law enforcer is back without a badge...and he means business he back to lay down the lay once and for all!!!!!


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