What a mess. As much as the RoboCop series descended into silliness from the first installment to the second, nothing could have prepared me for RoboCop 3. After neglecting to properly deal with RoboCop’s need to come to terms with his partial humanity for two films, we get a more family-friendly about face and watch as RoboCop joins a group of revolutionaries and fights back against “the Man.”Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. Allow me to set the scene for you- Omni Consumer Products is practically bankrupt but their goal of leveling Detroit and erecting their utopia, Delta City, in its place lives on through an equally sinister-minded Japanese corporation. OCP has begun the first phase of destroying the city by using military-style squadrons to forcibly evict entire city blocks at a time and leveling what once stood there. These efforts are met with hostility from the poor working class citizens getting forced out of their homes by the greedy corporation and a resistance movement springs up. Resorting to guerrilla tactics, these revolutionaries steal supplies, blow up the demolition equipment and kill enforcement squads wherever possible before slipping off into the shadows.
RoboCop and his partner witness the brutality of these enforcement squads while on duty. When the resistance group strikes, the enforcement squad opens up on anyone around. His directives telling him to protect the innocent, RoboCop attacks the enforcement squad. His partner is killed in the battle and RoboCop is badly damaged. RoboCop is taken in by the resistance group, fixed up and told about all the awful things OCP stands for.
To say that this film gives RoboCop heart is wrong. Yes, the titular character does the “right” thing and stands up for the oppressed citizens of Detroit, but he also doesn’t encourage the revolutionaries to give up their stealing and murderous ways like you would expect a justice-minded cyborg cop to. It slips into a kind of moral relativism that supports the revolutionaries' use of violence, but no one else’s.
On top of that, there still is nothing new introduced to the RoboCop series. Yes, there is the continuing saga of OCP’s quest for domination of Detroit, but that has always been a subplot in these films. RoboCop gave up on his family without much of a struggle, which killed his humanity for me. In RoboCop 3 our hero is nothing more than a walking, catch-phrase spouting demolition machine. Maybe it’s the effect of Franchise Syndrome, where the content, meaning and purpose of a film gets diluted for each sequel made, but part of me thinks that RoboCop was never meant to be a film franchise. It’s quite ironic that the original film was anti-capitalist and anti-establishment, yet the studio and filmmakers gave in to the sin of greed and took their cultural criticism and turned it into a cash cow.
The effects continue to be below par. You would think that a film that has so much advanced technology would have used state-of-the-art technologies to bring the special effects to life. The scenes with the Japanese company’s ninja robots were a silly excuse to incorporate martial arts action into an otherwise standard shoot-’em-up affair. The big finale is poorly executed and it’s a false climax at that. Despite the fact that the bad guys (evil corporations) lose in the end, to the victor go the spoils- a half demolished city with little to offer anybody in the way of safety, security or much of a future. That’s how I felt about the movie once all was said and done.
Truth be told, this movie is one big mess. Actor Peter Weller refused to reprise his role as RoboCop because of scheduling conflicts, the uncomfortable RoboCop suit and general malaise about the quality of the second film. Co-star Nancy Allen only agreed to return as RoboCop’s partner if her character could die in the first half of the film. With this little faith in the film from the cast, it’s no wonder that RoboCop 3 fell victim to camp and seemed to just be going through the motions.
RATING: 1.5 out of 5
