This film lacks the easy mix of dark humor and violence that made the original such a treat. It's clearly a darker and more violent film than the first - more grusesome, with more space between funny lines of dialogue. Interestingly, director Irvin Kershner was accused of doing the same thing in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and that didn't bother me.
What makes this film fail is it's patent unbelievability. For example, after the initial success of the original model, one prototype RoboCop after another self-destructs. They get suicidal, according to scientists in the movie, because they lack a strong sense of duty. Why exactly a strong sense of duty creates a survival instinct is unclear.
The new Robocop is all machine, no humanity - basically, a robot. Which begs the question: why build it on a human frame at all? And why do they decide to turn Cain, the drug dealer, into a robot? This like the mad scientist in FRANKENSTEIN using a diseased brain to anumate his creature, only worse, because he doesn't need a brain at all.
The final sequence begins when they bring an armed Robocop II creature into a room ful of reporters, with no safeguards to shut him down. The concluding passages of the movie expend untold thousands of machine-gun bullets, most of them fired at the bad robot despite the fact that it's manifestly impervious to bullets. And so on.
Finally, we see relatively little of RoboCop in this movie, perhaps because Peter Weller rebelled against the inhuman ordeal of wearing that heavy metal suit any longer than necessary. What we do see are lots of violence and action, lots of dialogue between minor characters that never pays off, and lots of humorous TV ads for the world of the future. That, too, is a problem here - little drives the film or holds it together, and the tender, patient character development of the first film is totally missing.
What makes this film fail is it's patent unbelievability. For example, after the initial success of the original model, one prototype RoboCop after another self-destructs. They get suicidal, according to scientists in the movie, because they lack a strong sense of duty. Why exactly a strong sense of duty creates a survival instinct is unclear.
The new Robocop is all machine, no humanity - basically, a robot. Which begs the question: why build it on a human frame at all? And why do they decide to turn Cain, the drug dealer, into a robot? This like the mad scientist in FRANKENSTEIN using a diseased brain to anumate his creature, only worse, because he doesn't need a brain at all.
The final sequence begins when they bring an armed Robocop II creature into a room ful of reporters, with no safeguards to shut him down. The concluding passages of the movie expend untold thousands of machine-gun bullets, most of them fired at the bad robot despite the fact that it's manifestly impervious to bullets. And so on.
Finally, we see relatively little of RoboCop in this movie, perhaps because Peter Weller rebelled against the inhuman ordeal of wearing that heavy metal suit any longer than necessary. What we do see are lots of violence and action, lots of dialogue between minor characters that never pays off, and lots of humorous TV ads for the world of the future. That, too, is a problem here - little drives the film or holds it together, and the tender, patient character development of the first film is totally missing.