Page Not Found - DVDfever.co.uk
DVDfever.co.uk

404: Page not found

It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search or one of the links below?

Archives

Categories

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers:

WP Twitter Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com

Dom Robinson reviews

Robocop: Special Edition

The future of law enforcement.

Distributed by

MGM


Cover In the DVD trilogy boxset, it's the first time that Robocop has been available in its slightly-extended director's cut form with added violence and gore. We only received this disc out of the trilogy for review, hence the reason why those two films are not mentioned here although, as I understand it, the extras on the latter two are severly lacking.

So, for those who've lived under a rock for the past 15 years who or what is Robocop? Quite simply, he's part-man, part-machine and all cop. In a bid to rid Delta City of crime they need a new kind of law enforcer who'll never take a day off sick and never make a mistake. Although the first film was made before anyone had heard of the internet, he's still similarly-connected to the police department's computer so as soon as crimes are reported, Robocop can respond to them.

But how to get someone to volunteer to be turned into a robot? Difficult one. OCP, led by the affectionately-titled Old Man (Dan O'Herlihy), need to find someone who's already dead - enter Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), or rather exit stage left after an encounter when he and female officer Lewis (Nancy Allen) enter the lair of great big bad guy Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his henchmen. First, Murphy gets his hand shot off by Boddicker before being blasted into next week by the rest of the gang and finally being assassinated by the leader with a bullet in the head. (Note that the gang members include Twin Peaks' Ray Wise, who played Laura's father - and Paul McCrane, now best known as E.R.'s Dr. "Rocket" Romano).

Once the new guy's out and about, his creator Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) comes under fire from the Old Man's deputy, Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) after the latter's ill-fated prototype, ED-209, fails to understand when a crime is real or not and turns one of OCP's minions into mince. However, Morton's problems aren't just confined to his superiors when Robocop starts to remember his previous life and the family he lost some time ago.

When broadcast on ITV for the first few times, this became one of the most heavily-censored films of all time - something which became quite a joke as simple words like "asshole" became "airhead" and violent moments such as Murphy being killed were reduced to the height of ridiculousness as almost all of the bullet-riddling was removed so when one character announces, "I'm outta ammo!", you think he's barely started! Hence, all the better that this director's cut includes moments where ED-209 pumps even more bullets into the OCP employee and when Murphy is killed. You do get the choice to play the original version too, but I'd stick with the extended one.

And when you've remembered all the best bits about this film, don't forget Verhoeven's satirical use of fake adverts such as "Nukem", the nuclear war game for all the family and another one about picking your own artificial heart.

For the record, Robocop 2 sees the metal hero taking the creator of a new drug, Nuke, to task. For anyone who cares about Robocop 3, click on that name to read the review of the single-release DVD.


Cover Robocop was filmed in an original ratio of 1.66:1, which is how the Region 1 DVD is presented, but this release opts for a slightly-zoomed-in 1.85:1 ratio to emulate the theatrical ratio. This will lose a small amount of top and bottom information but nothing to worry about.

What is more worrying is how scratched this print is, particularly early on. It's only a 15-year-old film and I expected far better than this, even if it is anamorphic. When there are no scratches present, there's still an underlying and unexplained level of grain. At a number of times the print can look perfectly fine, but why wasn't it given the remastering it so seriously needs?

Similarly, I level a question at the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Some SFX are exemplary, such as when Robocop's visor is screwed down at all four corners early on. Such precision is used with the front and back stereo steering that it makes me wonder if the sound mixer was on a tea break during many explosions that sound flat, lifeless and monotonous.

Whatever the latter two discs may or may not have, the main one starts with a documentary Flesh and Blood: The Making of Robocop", taking in chat from principal crew members and what their influences were in the character's creation. This is followed by two 1987 featurettes, Shooting Robocop and Making Robocop, neither of which break with the usual tradition of a featurette containing similar chat like you'd expect from "Flesh and Blood", but filmed on-set, although the first one aims to start off like a real Q&A with Robocop. Also contained in the above are plenty of clips from the film.

5 deleted scenes are included such as a fake advert for Topless Pizza, an OCP press conference, a nun being interviewed in the street, a final Media Break announcement and more director's cut footage but as a work-in-progress and in anamorphic 16:9 too. 4 movie trailers are included - 2 for the first film and one each for the other two, as well as a TV commercial.

Still galleries show off the director, the design, ED-209, special effects and behind-the-scenes work, all set to music from the film. Phil Tippett, the visual effects supervisor takes you through Storyboard comparisons over the awe-inspiring ED-209. Finally, comes a feature-length Audio commentary with director Verhoeven, co-writer Edward Neumeier, executive producer Jon Davison and Robocop expert Paul M. Sammon.

There are 32 chapters to the movie, dialogue comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 for English and Spanish, while subtitles come in 12 languages: English (and hard of hearing), Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish.

The main menus are mostly static but contain music and have screen-wipes between them to fit in with the theme of the movie.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS



OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.

Also, read my interview with Peter Weller online.

[Up to the top of this page]

Page Not Found - DVDfever.co.uk

DVDfever.co.uk

404: Page not found

It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search or one of the links below?

Archives

Categories

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers:

WP Twitter Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com