Robocop - Dark Justice (2001)

I'd get it...if it was a 4 disc pack.

This has how many dvds this series? Four? And they're charging thirteen dollars a DVD to watch eight hours?

Be realistic. I'd buy it if it was all four together for thirteen dollars. The movie isn't what it was before. They made Robocop weaker than his TV debut.

And they are going to charge us seventy dollars (including the shipping and handling of course) to buy four lame eight hour movies to watch maybe two or three times. DVD Rentals where are you? Nobody is going to pay that much for eight hours of a dull run. September 21, 2007

Extra cheese has rarely tasted better!!

Robocop: Dark Justice

Ever since I picked up the trilogy for a whopping $15 I have since became a major fan. Not so much for the decent action, not so much for the surreal satire which is often humorous, but for the man beneath the iron.

Page Fletcher (of Hitchhiker fame) takes over this role and makes it as outstanding as Peter Weller. Though he doesn't have the walk down perfectly, he does talk the talk. Most of the other actors are quite good, the story is actually interesting, and the while the effects are no where near the consistant quality of the feature films I was surprised at how good they are! Despite the sometimes sagging effects of this Canadian mini-series (Robo's suit and walking effect are a bit lame) I must say this does for the small screen practically what the first movie did for the large screen, and that for me says a lot.

This first disc has a LOT of heart and strikes a chord with me when dealing with humanity. I have since ordered the other three and am looking forward to completing the story which obviously picks up on the next installment. A definite buy for any RoboCop fan that loves the humanity more than the explosions. November 23, 2006

RoboCop, RoboCop, RoboCop and More RoboCop

Supposedly RoboCop Prime Directives was originally a TV miniseries released in 2001. I'm not sure where it aired, but each episode is feature film length and the violence/language varies from PG to R rated material.

The series includes Dark Justice, Meltdown, Resurrection, and Crash and Burn...and the movies should be watched in that order for them to make sense.

Page Fletcher (from HBO's The Hitchhiker) stars as RoboCop. He does about as good a job as Robert John Burke did in RoboCop 3. In fact, the whole Prime Directives series is on par with RoboCop 3...and that's not a compliment. It's not really a knock either. It's a declaration that Prime Directives is an average sequel-set to what were two great initial RoboCop films (RoboCop and RoboCop 2).

Prime Directives takes place ten years after the first RoboCop. Alex Murphy/RoboCop is no longer needed in Delta City and is now considered a nuisance by OCP. John Cable, Alex Murphy's former partner, is killed and brought back as a new RoboCop and is instructed to destroy Murphy/RoboCop.

OCP is now in the hands of corrupt executives (one is a malevolent new CEO, one is Cable/RoboCop's ex-wife and one is Murphy/RoboCop's own son) and they have a new technology called SAINT that they will use to run the city and market to consumers "to make all of your decisions for you". But there is a terrorist that wants to infect SAINT with a computer virus that could take down all computers on the net and release a deadly nanotechlogy into humans.

All 4 episodes run apx 90 minutes each, so we're talking about 6 hours of 3-star RoboCop. So if you've got a rainy day and a craving for RoboCop, this series is for you.

As of this writing, the series is available as a set only from Amazon resellers, and the set is about 1/2 the price of buying all 4 separately. But Prime Directives is far from collector caliber, so I'd recommend just finding these to rent, and keep the viewing order that I mentioned earlier in mind.
August 28, 2006

Good for a miniseries

These four movies are like a TV miniseries, so they aren't as good as a movie with a big production budget might be. Still, they're pretty good, and if you're a sci-fi or Robocop fan it's certainly worth the time and money to watch them. It doesn't say on the box what order to watch them in, so here it is: Dark Justice, Meldown, Resurrection, Crash & Burn. December 9, 2005

I'd buy this for a dollar... NOT!

Ya know, just about every celluloid RoboCop project they've put out since the second theatrical release has been one big steamin' load of-- well, you know-- after another. You had yer corny "kid-friendly" sequel that effectively finished off the theatrical franchise, a cheesy yet mercifully short-lived TV series, and a couple cartoon shows that had slightly less plausible story lines than the average classic episode of "G.I. Joe". So needless to say, I wasn't holding out any hope of this relatively low-budget Canadian-filmed four-part direct-to-video mini-series being any better than its post-"Robo 2" ancestors. Fortunately, I wasn't disappointed! Well, actually I WAS disappointed. And it wasn't really all that fortunate I was disappointed, either, now that I think about it...

Anyhoo, let's start off with the special effects and sets and stuff. While I didn't expect the visual FX and sets to be all that advanced-looking, I was at least hoping they'd look better than what I'd seen in the TV series. Sadly, they were WORSE! It also didn't help that the new RoboCop getup looked like it was cast from an inferior mold of the original, and didn't sport a decent finish. The outfit was also two sizes too big for the actor playing the title role. Another painful thing to witness was the opening up of the hip-joint seams every time the guy took a step forward whenever he was walking away from the camera... which didn't occur too often, thank goodness.

Also kinda bizarre was the cult of suicide bombers. Whenever a member decided to detonate himself, blew up into a light-beige shower of what looked like partially liquefied styrofoam. I guess the FX department for this turkey didn't have the budget for stage blood and chopped beef to shower the "blast areas" with proper gore, hmmm?

But if you want REALLY cheesy effects & costumes-- and a really cheesy character for that matter-- ya gotta check out Bone Machine ("Bone Machine"??? Sheesh...), this feature's big "anti-hero/villain/tool-of-the-big-conspiracy". Now I know that the creators of RoboCop were inspired by super-hero comics and such, but the downright cartoonish look this guy sports is too ludicrous for words to describe. It didn't help that the guy even sounded like your average hackneyed supervillain, complete with maniacal laughter and really bad "witty" banter. And if you can't figure out the guy's secret identity the first time they introduce him in one of this show's many flashback scenes, you're probably still wowed over "The Sixth Sense's" twist ending...

Then there are the usual plot gimmicks you've come to expect, like OCP being in the red and almost bankrupt... which segues into the main plot where several OCP execs getting together in a conspiracy to "save the company from itself". Fortunately, they recruit Robo's adult son to be part of the secret society to help "thicken the plot" as it were. Then there's our hero interacting with his former partner from the pre-Robo days... a partner who shares a dark and terrible secret with his former friend. Fortunately(?), the recurring flashback scenes help keep ya "in the loop" on past events leading up to and following this terrible secret. Oh, and this former partner used to be wed to the leader of the OCP conspiracy. Coincidence? I don't know, myself... heh.

Another little tried-and-true gimmick that pops up here for the umpteenth time is the reprogramming of RoboCop's directives so that he cannot help but do the bidding of whoever reprogrammed him. `Course, he does his darndest to resist... in a way that's delightfully hammy and over-the-top, yet is also quite painful to watch. More painful than what our hero's going through in the scene, I dare say.

Oops, I mustn't forget the whole biting-over-the-top-social-satire-dark-humor that is a staple of the RoboCop franchise... a staple that, sadly, has never been quite as dark or as biting as what was shown in the original RoboCop flick. Well, except for one aspect of cable TV news as we know it today: the bottom-of-the-screen-secondary-news-crawl. They actually did a decent job of poking fun at in this presentation. TOO well, in fact; I hadda watch the news break segments twice `cuz I spent the first go-round reading what was on the crawl rather than listening to the newscasters!

Needless to say, I'm not too keen on the latest entry into the rather sad RoboCop mythos. In fact, I'm downright disgusted by it! But the hell of it is, I found the loose ends they left untied at the end of this show just compelling enough for me to want to see part two! What's the conspiracy's next big move to save the company? Will Robo's kid make the right choice? And what about the fate of Robo's old partner? I just gotz ta know!

Am I pathetic or what!

Um, don't answer that...

`Late October 4, 2005

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