RoboCop

Last night I watched RoboCop on DVD. The film was released in 1987 and is set in a near-future Detroit. The film is about a police officer (played by Peter Weller) who is brutally murdered by a vicious gang, and is used to create a cyborg (a kind of fusion of man and machine) called RoboCop, "the Future of Law Enforcement". RoboCop proves to be hugely successful, until his human memories and personality start to return and he sets off on his own private mission. The film was massively successful and gave rise to two sequels and a couple of TV series. It's a very good film, full of action with good special effects which still stand up fairly well today. It also has depths to it and is quite satirical, and often very funny. It is still very much a product of the eighties, but it has aged well. When I was a kid it was one of the three movies that you had to see if you wanted to be in any way cool (the others were A Nightmare on Elm Street and Aliens). The version I was watching was Paul Verhoeven's Director's Cut which is pretty much the same as the theatrical version but adds quite a bit of extra violence. A remake is due out next year directed by Darren Aronofsky.

This morning I went along to get my groceries. When I went to buy my bottle of wine the cashier flatly refused to beleieve I was thirty. He said I looked far too young. I stood my ground and eventually he sold me the wine, and I said that I would bring proof of age next week.

I'm writing this while listening to the audio commentary on RoboCop. It is pretty interesting.