RoboCop 2 (1990) Orion/Sci-Fi-Action RT: 117 minutes Rated R (language, strong bloody violence, torture sequences, drugs) Director: Irvin Kershner Screenplay: Frank Miller and Walon Green Music: Leonard Rosenman Cinematography: Mark Irwin Release date: June 22, 1990 (US) Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan, Gabriel Damon, Felton Perry, Roger Aaron Brown, Willard E. Pugh, Galyn Gorg, Stephen Lee, Robert DoQui. Box Office: $45.7M (US)
Rating: ***
RoboCop 2 is a dark, mean-spirited and bleak sequel to the hit 1987 movie starring Peter Weller (Buckaroo Banzai) as the titular cyborg cop. It didn’t do as well as its predecessor, but I suspect it’s because audiences didn’t know what to do with it. It’s another one that’s ahead of its time.
Much of the credit for that goes to comic book artist Frank Miller (Sin City) who co-wrote the screenplay with Walon Green (The Wild Bunch). He has a different style of writing; he leans more towards noir as seen in his takes on Daredevil and The Dark Knight. The tone of RoboCop 2 is completely different; it’s much darker and edgier. Orion didn’t like Miller’s original screenplay which they felt was unfilmable and not commercial enough. It went through four drafts before they brought in Green to do a rewrite. Still, you can see Miller’s style written all over it.
In RoboCop 2, Detroit has become even more of a hellhole thanks to a new designer drug called Nuke. The addicts will do anything to obtain Nuke; it’s the best drug to hit the streets since LSD and angel dust. As the movie opens, the police are on strike. It seems that OCP (Omni Consumer Products) has cancelled their pensions and cut their salaries. It’s all part of grander scheme on the company’s part. They’re actively trying to make the city default on its $37M debt so they can foreclose and begin construction on a planned Utopia they call Delta City.
The streets are plagued with crime; RoboCop is seemingly the only cop on duty. Not that it matters to OCP. They think their creation has become obsolete so they’re sinking millions into an upgrade they call RoboCop 2. They can’t get it to work; every prototype kills itself upon activation. That’s when OCP psychologist Dr. Faxx (Bauer, Flashdance) asks the boss (O’Herlihy, Halloween III) if she can take over the project. She thinks she has a solution to the problem. Instead of using cops to create a new RoboCop, why not use the brain of a violent criminal? The Old Man, probably thinking with the wrong head, gives her the green light to proceed.
The primary distributor of Nuke is Cain (Noonan, Manhunter), sort of a combination of Charles Manson and Dr. Timothy Leary. He heads a cult of followers and publicly advocates the use of Nuke as an entryway to paradise. His inner circle includes girlfriend Angie (Gorg, Point Break) and juvenile apprentice Hob (Damon, Tequila Sunrise). He’s probably the most disturbing character in the movie. He’s only 12, but he deals drugs, curses like a truck driver, runs around with a vicious gang of drug dealers, carries a gun and witnesses horrible acts of violence. Where are his parents? Why isn’t he in school?
Determined to bring the production of Nuke to a complete halt, RoboCop tries to hunt down Cain with his partner Anne Lewis (Allen, Blow Out). He learns where Cain is hiding from a corrupt, Nuke-addicted cop. When he goes to confront him, the villains get the upper hand and disassemble him. This, of course, gives OCP the chance to undermine the OG RoboCop by loading his circuits with a lot of ridiculous new directives that turn the effective crime-fighting machine into a cheerful and clueless buffoon. Once he realizes what’s happening, RoboCop zaps himself with a killer jolt of electricity. With the problem fixed, he resumes his war on drugs and crime.
RoboCop convinces the striking cops to drop their picket signs and help him get Cain. In the ensuing raid, the psychotic drug lord is critically injured. It looks like he won’t survive, not if Dr. Faxx has anything to say about it. She shuts off his life support, removes his central nervous system and transplants it into a robot. Thus, RoboCop 2 is born. Naturally, it doesn’t work out like she hopes. That’s what happens when you use the brain of a Nuke addict. It’s up to the original model to make things right.
With all that’s going on, you’d think RoboCop 2 would be a total kick-ass sci-fi-action movie. Well, it is and it isn’t. While it has more than its fair share of action and violence, the overall dark tone of the movie makes it difficult to really enjoy the mayhem. The violence is much more sadistic in this sequel, especially the scene where Cain tortures a betrayer by having a doctor perform surgery on him while he’s still fully conscious (no anesthetic either).
The sequel’s sense of humor is markedly different too. It’s darker. The jokes don’t always land, a by-product of Irvin Kershner’s (The Empire Strikes Back) heavy-handed direction. It makes for an uneven movie. On the upside, we still get news reports of world catastrophes and bogus commercials interwoven in the action. I’m partial to the lethal car-protection system hawked by John Glover (52 Pick-Up).
It took a few viewings, but I like RoboCop 2. It didn’t click at first, but now I think it’s solid. Weller and Allen are still good as the heroes who have each other’s backs. The actors’ chemistry is strong. Noonan is terrifying as the very personification of drug-induced evil. He’s dangerous enough in human form; he’s made worse when transformed into a killer robot that runs on Nuke. O’Herlihy’s character is more sinister this time around. Faxx is effective as the cold-hearted corporate type who sleeps with the boss for the power it grants her. Willard Pugh (Moving Violations) has some good scenes as the mayor who tries to strike a deal with the drug gang (post-Cain) in order to pay back the city’s debt.
In short, RoboCop 2 might not be as awesome as the first movie, but it’s better than I originally gave it credit for. I love that the makers tried to do something other than a mere rehash. It’s not 100% effective, but it makes it stand out from the pack of tired sequels that keep getting made.
Here’s something interesting (involving RoboCop 2, sort of) that illustrates how arbitrary the ratings system is. RoboCop 2 was released the same weekend as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a psychological character study of a serial killer, here in Philadelphia. The violence in that movie, while certainly disturbing, isn’t nearly as graphic, gratuitous or frequent as the violence in RoboCop 2. Yet the MPAA wanted to slap Henry with an X rating while they had no problem giving RoboCop 2 an R. Now this is a film where a violent act occurs every few minutes and one of the bad guys is a foul-mouthed child. What’s up with that?
Henry was ultimately released without a rating, instead carrying a warning that nobody under 18 would be admitted. It’s one of the movies that caused the MPAA to create the NC-17 rating which would indicate the film in question contained adult material and no one under 17 would be admitted under any circumstances. It was meant to replace the X which had become too closely associated with hardcore pornography. The XX and XXX rating aren’t even official MPAA ratings. They were created by the filmmakers to attract a larger audience of perverts. Unfortunately, most theater chains won’t show NC-17 films. Many publications refuse to advertise them because they think NC-17 and X are one in the same. They’re not and it’s important that people understand this, an NC-17 movie is one that has explicit material meant for the eyes and ears of adults. It doesn’t mean it’s pornographic. Anyway, I found this very interesting as I saw RoboCop 2 and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer on the same weekend. It was the first time I ever realized how arbitrary the movie ratings system is. We mortals will never understand their policies or standards. It’s one of life’s big mysteries.
