RoboCop (1987)

Under all that chrome, RoboCop is a comedy about a company that thinks it can buy a whole city, and it’s funnier now than ever. Paul Verhoeven fills Detroit with fake TV commercials, grinning news anchors and executives fighting over office politics, and nearly every one of those jokes lands. Peter Weller has to act through a helmet, a stiff walk and a flat robot voice, and he still makes Murphy’s lost memories hurt. Nancy Allen’s Lewis is the best partner a machine could ask for. Kurtwood Smith plays Boddicker like a smiling nightmare in glasses, and Ronny Cox and Miguel Ferrer are perfect corporate snakes. The honest knock is the violence. Verhoeven pushes it so far that the satire sometimes gets lost in the noise, and this is not one for younger viewers. The stop-motion ED-209 still looks great. It made $53.4 million worldwide on a reported $13.7M. An 8.7 because it’s smarter than it looks, and it looks great. $4,348 says you hear a vending machine beep this week and answer it in a robot voice.

What works: The satire of TV ads and corporate greed is sharp and funny, and Peter Weller makes a man in a metal suit genuinely moving.

What doesn’t: The violence is pushed so far that it sometimes drowns out the jokes, which keeps the movie off limits for a lot of viewers.

Who it’s for: Adults who like their action movies with something to say about who’s really running things.