Starring: Robert John Burke, Nancy Allen, John Castle, Remy Ryan, Rip Torn, CCH Pounder, Jill
Hennessy, Mako
Director: Fred Dekker
Producer: Patrick Crowley
Screenplay: Frank Miller and Fred Dekker
Music: Basil Poledouris
Released by Orion Pictures
Robocop 3 is merely a run-of-the-mill superhero movie, complete with comic-book type villains and a plot of limited scope and even more restricted appeal. It's the good guys versus the bad guys in a time-honored tradition. There's a lot of firepower, numerous explosions, and a few amazing new gadgets for the superhero to put to use. All-in-all, it's pretty routine, and that's a big disappointment for those hoping that the third entry in the series would bring things back around to the level of the first. At least we're spared another plodding and pointlessly violent adventure like Robocop 2. This one has a little life; rigor mortis has not quite set in.
Detroit is still a war zone, but this time it's an elite element of the police force, the "Rehabilitators", against a group of terrorists who are, in reality, citizens fighting for the right to stay in their homes. When Robocop (Robert John Burke) enters the fray, he does so not on the side of the OCP forces, but on the side of the downtrodden -- which means he's fighting the police. Not surprisingly, a warrant is issued for his arrest, but the Japanese powers behind the Rehabilitators aren't taking any chances, and send an elite Ninja warrior (Bruce Locke) after the half-man, half-machine.
The great thing about the original Robocop(directed by a pre-Basic Instinct Paul Verhoeven) was a tongue-in-cheek attitude coupled with an indefatigable wit. There was action, to be sure, but the script was clever, and it made the old superhero formula seem fresh. Alas, with Robocop 2, little of that freshness remained, and we got what amounted to a senselessly-violent rehash of the first. The satire was tired and the action pedestrian. Now, along comes Robocop 3, and, while it doesn't breathe new life into the series, it at least offers something more diverting than its immediate predecessor. This installment goes for straight action, allowing only brief instances of the facetiousness which made the original so enjoyable.
Peter Weller chose not to reprise his role in Robocop 3, but he isn't really missed. Robert John Burke does a passable job as the cyborg officer, and bears a resemblance to Weller with the mask off. Almost all the surviving characters from the first two films are back, so there's a reasonable sense of continuity. The murky politics of who controls the police gets even more confusing here, but that becomes moot by the final battle. Murphy's search for his lost family is reduced to an almost-nonexistent subplot.
A word about the special effects: while most of them are adequate, there are some scenes featuring an airborne Robocop that are absolutely laughable. Hasn't someone come up with a way to make flying look better than the horrible sequences when Christopher Reeve donned the Superman cloak? Judging from this movie, the answer would have to be "no."
Orion's financial problems delayed the release of this film for so long that its arrival is distinctly anticlimactic. People will wait a long time for a special movie, but not for something like Robocop 3. Since it's hard to imagine conditions under which the series will be granted a further entry, this particular superhero has almost certainly flown off into the sunset. Too bad it wasn't in a cinematic blaze of glory.
© 1993, 1996 James Berardinelli