Stars: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Dan O'Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan, Felton Perry, Robert Doqui, Gabriel Damon, Willard E. Pugh, Robert Burke, Rip Torn

Director: Fred Dekker

Summary: A box set featuring 'Robocop' which is set in Old Detroit in the very near future, the story follows Murphy, a tough cop who is used as target practice by a gang of lunatics. The police force's controlling body decide to rebuild Murphy into a Cyborg, part man, part machine, and dedicated to law enforcement. 'Robocop 2' in which the cyborg robocop is back to rid Detroit of the designer drug Nuke. The company that produced him have designed another cyborg using his brain as a model. Now our hero must fight the evil drug lord and a look-alike, think-alike machine. 'Robocop 3' in which the giant Omni Consumer Corporation has succeeded in creating war zones in the city's last remaining neighbourhoods to make way for their new metropolis, Delta City. The innocent citizens, dominated by armed commandos, need help - fast. Enter the cyborg supercop, back without a badge... and he's deadly...

This collection features ROBOCOP and its two sequels. In Paul Verhoeven's original urban sci-fi Western, Peter Weller stars as Murphy, a good Detroit cop who literally gets shot to pieces while on duty and winds up reborn as a crime-fighting machine--RoboCop. His former partner (Nancy Allen) tries to help RoboCop remember his human past, but his circuitry blocks whatever dim memories remain. Luckily, a chance encounter with one of his killers wakes up the human essence in RoboCop, causing him to rebel against his programming and commence on a one-cyborg mission of vengeance that leads all the way to the top of OCP, the omnipresent corporation that created him.
ROBOCOP 2 is an even darker, more violent sequel to the first film. This time around, in addition to the corporate goons who are busy exploiting the blighted city of Detroit, RoboCop (Weller) must battle a psychotic drug lord who has been transformed into a second robot enforcer. Finally, in ROBOCOP 3, the heroic cyborg (this time played by Robert John Burke) joins an underground guerrilla army of homeless people united against OCP.

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Paul Verhoeven was almost unknown in Hollywood prior to the release of RoboCopin 1987. But after this ultra-violent yet strangely subversive and satirical sci-fi picture became a huge hit his reputation for extravagant and excessive, yet superbly well-crafted filmmaking was assured. Controversial as ever, Verhoeven saw the blue-collar cop (Peter Weller) who is transformed into an invincible cyborg as "an American Jesus with a gun", and so the film dabbles with death and resurrection imagery as well as mercilessly satirising Reagan-era America. No targets escape Verhoeven's unflinching camera eye, from yuppie excess and corporate backstabbing to rampant consumerism and vacuous media personalities. As with his later sci-fi satire Starship Troopersthe extremely bloody violence resolutely remains on the same level as a Tom and Jerrycartoon.

The inevitable sequel, competently directed by Irvin Kershner, thankfully continues to mine the dark vein of anti-consumerist satire while being reflexively aware that it is itself a shining example of that which it is lampooning. Sadly the third instalment in the series, now without Peter Weller in the title role, is exactly the kind of dumbed-down production-line flick that the corporate suits of OCP might have dreamed up at a marketing meeting. Its only virtue is a decent music score from regular Verhoeven collaborator Basil Poledouris, whose splendid march theme returned from the original score.

On the DVD:Packaged in a fold-out slipcase these three discs make a very collectable set. All are presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic prints, although only the first movie has any extra material worth mentioning. Here the Director's Cut option allows the viewer to see Paul Verhoeven's more explicitly violent versions of Murphy's "assassination", ED-209's bloody malfunction and the shootout finale. These extended sequences are handily signposted in the scene selection menu, and the filming of them can be seen in a sequence of Director's Cut footage. Deleted scenes include "Topless Pizza" ("I'll buy that for a dollar!") and there are two contemporary "making of" featurettes plus a good, new half-hour retrospective. Both the latter and the director's commentary make abundantly clear the Reagan-era satire and are chock full of quotable lines from Verhoeven--"I wanted to show Satan killing Jesus"--and his producer--"Fascism for liberals". Stop-motion animator Phil Tippett gives a commentary on the storyboard-to-film comparisons,and there are the usual trailers and photos. Showing just how much the sequels are rated in comparison, the second and third discs have nothing but theatrical trailers and their sound is just Dolby 2.0 whereas the original movie has been remastered into Dolby 5.1.--Mark Walker

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen, 16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Directors Cut Of Robocop Previously Unreleased Version With Extra Violence Via Integrated Branching Or The Version Originally Seen At Cinemas, Brand New Documentary Flesh And Steel, Deleted Scenes, Additional Production Reel Including Audio Stage Directions
Subtitles:	Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1987
Release Date:	February 4, 2002
Runtime:	309 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	21762 C D V D
Keywords:	Action, Box, General, Wide, Screen, Set, Robocop, Trilogy, Adventure
Genre:	Action/Adventure