Robocop 2 sure looks good on paper: Irvin Kershner directing, whose Empire Strikes Back gets as many votes as the others for best in the Star Wars series, and Frank Miller writing, the comic book writer/artist whose Batman revisions sparked a renaissance in the genre in the late 1980s. Additionally, both are working from the surprisingly entertaining premise of the original Robocop, in which a deceased cop is resurrected as a law-and-order killing machine with identity problems.
The sequel is all but unrecognizable, with hardly two enjoyable minutes to be found in the entirity of this gritty, spiteful film. The plot is something about drugs, pre-pubescent crime lords, and a brain transplant into a giant killer robot, but none of it is very memorable. The original was full of hammy acting and over-the-top action, but dipped into realism (the threatened police strike, Robocop's ghostly memories of his former life) enough to keep it grounded. The striking police officers in the sequel are little more than cardboard cut-outs, and a scene were Robo confronts his "wife" is executed so lamely as to be downright insulting.
Things look up when PR-minded execs decide to reprogram Robo with more PC directives and he winds up taking potshots at smokers. It's a nice 30 seconds, but the resolution (Robo sticks a high-voltage cable down his chassis) is so simple-minded that he might as well have erased our memory along with his. Movies like this give sequels a bad name.
The sequel is all but unrecognizable, with hardly two enjoyable minutes to be found in the entirity of this gritty, spiteful film. The plot is something about drugs, pre-pubescent crime lords, and a brain transplant into a giant killer robot, but none of it is very memorable. The original was full of hammy acting and over-the-top action, but dipped into realism (the threatened police strike, Robocop's ghostly memories of his former life) enough to keep it grounded. The striking police officers in the sequel are little more than cardboard cut-outs, and a scene were Robo confronts his "wife" is executed so lamely as to be downright insulting.
Things look up when PR-minded execs decide to reprogram Robo with more PC directives and he winds up taking potshots at smokers. It's a nice 30 seconds, but the resolution (Robo sticks a high-voltage cable down his chassis) is so simple-minded that he might as well have erased our memory along with his. Movies like this give sequels a bad name.