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I am absolutely not a Puritan, and generally don’t take issue with high levels of bloodshed provided it feels relative to the plot. This is a subjective issue, of course, so let’s just say that I am an enthusiastic fan of Grand Theft Auto, therefore Clarence Boddicker and therefore Robocop. But even I have limits. For me, it isn’t so much a matter of being grossed out, although it will be with most people. It’s more because the story was already endowed with everything it needed to be successful. The story already presented a society so desensitized to violence that a room full of business executives could laugh off an epic death moments after witnessing it. The movie already drew out a world so devoid of accountability that governments, corporations and the people they served all viewed each other as the problem. But like every Mel Brooks sketch that ever went on too long, a handful of scenes in Robocop overextend their welcome, shoot past the point they were trying to make and into the realm of visual hyperbole. The death of Alex Murphy serves the story well on a number of levels, one of them being that in this movie the police are portrayed as heroes - trapped in the middle of a war, trying to balance their duty to serve while the facts on the ground make it impossible to do so.

But since Robocop clearly wants to be a drama as much as anything else, it’s fair to point out that Murphy’s over the top sacrifice ends up trivializing itself a bit. Much of the film’s story focuses on the irony that when you become insensitive to suffering you become insensitive to your own humanity. But in radicalizing so much of its own message, Robocop stumbles over its own point and becomes, like Omnicorp, part of its own problem. I still view it as an all time classic but it’s a movie that thanks to its crassness has had a hard time finding mainstream enthusiasm.

Robocop has always been kind of a fanboy thing, and the fact that its violence almost got it an X rating pulled them all in, even as it pushed away their parents. It’s the reason I snuck into the theater that day. But beneath it all is a very good dystopian thriller that makes great points about how societies decay while never taking itself as seriously as that sounds. And at the center of it is a man who just wanted to do the right thing, was brutally punished for it, yet ended up a savior to the very people who wronged him. I know, that story probably reminds you of something else. But Robocop is already surrounded by controversy. Let’s not bring religion into it, too.

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