Robocop Trilogy - Region 2 DVD

The original first, though. Robocop is a bone-fide science fiction masterpiece, an hour and a half of satire, violence, humour and the future of law enforcement. There’s a fairly conventional good vs evil story at the heart of it, yet this is nonetheless an ambitious film, gloriously realised on a low budget.

The sequel, Robocop 2, tries its damnedest to mirror the original, but it stumbles several times, not least for failing to carve out an identity of its own. So keen is it to be reverent to what went before, that the film suffers. But there are ideas here, and moments that make the movie well worth sitting through.

The third? Well, Robocop 3 is car crash cinema, sadly. Shoddy effects, and a decision to tame down the violent edge for a more child-friendly rating costs the film dear. It’s entertaining, albeit not for the right reasons.

Yet this remains a fascinating trilogy, boasting one excellent movie, one intriguing failure, and one film that’s as far removed from what made Robocop so interesting in the first place that it’s almost hard to resist. --Jon Foster