Great Shots: Robocop

I like Paul Verhoeven's Robocop -- always have.  It's the second R-rated movie I ever saw in a theater (following Brian De Palma's The Untouchables), and I recall seeing it with an attitude of considerable skepticism.  The TV commercials looked ridiculous -- the cheesiest B-movie nonsense.  I'm not sure what I expected when I took my seat in the Berkshire County movie theater way back in 1987, but certainly not the brutally violent, viciously satiric, hilariously funny sci-fi action whirlwind that followed.  I staggered out of the theater two hours later feeling dazed, dazzled, and slightly traumatized.  I can't count the number of times I've watched it in the two-plus decades since.

I've always viewed the career of Verhoeven with some frustration.  I haven't loved any of his films since Robocop, though Black Book is probably his most successful recent effort.  Starship Troopers has its adherents, but I could never quite get on board with that film.  Basic Instinct and Showgirls?  Essential signposts of 1990s Hollywood culture, perhaps, but not particularly good movies in my judgment.  Earlier efforts like Soldier of Orange and Flesh and Blood are more interesting.  I've yet to see his 1983 Dutch effort, The Fourth Man, but have heard good things about it.

What I will say about Verhoeven is that when he's on, he's extremely on.  Like many of the best directors in the Hollywood style, he has a deep understanding of how to combine blocking and camerawork to create propulsive scenes that emphasize what's going on in the story at a given moment.  Placed in service of a dense, brilliant screenplay such as Ed Neumeier provided for Robocop, Verhoeven's directorial chops (aided by cinematographer Jost Vacano) could be utilized to their fullest.  I've always admired the following shot from the beginning of the conference room sequence.  Long, bravura steadicam shots were becoming increasingly common in the 1980s, and many directors used the new device to wonderful effect -- consider Martin Scorsese's famed "Copacabana shot" from Goodfellas, or the shot of Jake LaMotta entering the ring in Raging Bull.  De Palma, too, became addicted to elaborately choreographed, impossibly long steadicam shots as his career progressed.  What I like about this particular shot, though, is its relative modesty.  It's beautifully executed, but never becomes a case of camerawork for camerawork's sake.  And it flows along so rapidly and confidently that you may well not notice you've just witnessed an amazing single-take shot until subsequent viewings later on.

A note: there are spoilers below.  If you haven't seen Robocop, please go see it.  If you have Netflix, you can stream it (as of this writing).  It's one of the essential science-fiction films, one of the essential 1980s films, and I can't say enough good things about it.

 

1. We begin in a wide composition, tracking backward as Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) and his fellow junior executives approach the conference room.  They're discussing Bob's Robocop program, and Bob's frustration that company politics may prevent it from ever seeing the light of day.  At this point the screenplay's not only setting up the idea of Robocop, but also the corporate rivalry between Bob and his higher-up, the reptilian Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), whom we're about to meet.

 

2.  Shot's tighter now, essentially a walking-and-talking 3-shot as Bob, Johnson (Felton Perry), and unfortunate rookie exec Kinney (Kevin Page) -- who has about three minutes left to live -- continue their conversation.

 

3. Shot continues in this vein, as poor Kinney pipes up to Bob Morton about how Jones is "a real shark."  Bob, as you can see by his expression, is in no mood to hear about it.

 

4. As Bob wheels around to give Kinney a piece of his mind, camera begins to favor Johnson, whose eyeline anticipates the future camera movement.  He sees Dick Jones and The Old Man (Dan O'Herlihy) approaching, and utters a warning to Bob.

 

5. Camera focuses on Johnson as it executes a rapid pan to the right.  You can see the characters in the background are blurred, indicating the rapidity of the pan.  This is some very skillful steadicam operation.  It's also an example of what, in film school, we were told was called "person-to-person" shot construction -- essentially, you use the movement of a character to motivate the camera movement and to justify its switch from one location or perspective to another.  You often see this in restaurant scenes where the camera follows a waiter before picking up the action at a particular table.

 

6. Camera has now abandoned Johnson and picked up Jones and the Old Man, who are in mid-conversation about Jones's ED-209 robot-policeman project.  Camera begins tracking in the opposite direction -- from right to left -- in order to accommodate the movement of Jones and the Old Man.  Note also that the reverse in screen direction, with exquisite subtlety, underscores the opposition between the two groups of characters we have thusfar met: the ambitious Young Turks versus the entrenched Old Guard.

 

7. Shot continues in the same vein, but note the extreme precision of the blocking: Miguel Ferrer is now standing in just such a spot so that we can glimpse this fleeting moment of Bob warily observing his nemesis walking by.

 

8. Still a 2-shot, but camera is circling around to the other side of the conference table as Jones and the Old Man prepare to take their seats.

 

9. Now seated, the Old Man begins to speak, and camera tracks backward, ever widening to reveal the size of the table and the number of executives arrayed around it.  This is corporate power in all its manifest glory, the shot seems to say: this is where the Big Shots make the decisions that drive the fates of ordinary people.

 

10. Shot's wider now, steadicam operator still walking back, and in the left of the frame we begin to see the model of Delta City.

 

11. The Delta City model comes fully into the foreground as the Old Man is discussing its impending construction.  Gleaming hope for the future?  Corporate boondoggle?  Unattainable mirage of a promised paradise that will never be? Delta City is all of those things, and the model's pristine whiteness emphasizes its unreal qualities.  On this powerful image, the shot ends, and Verhoeven goes into more conventional coverage for the remainder of the scene.

You'll often find that even the most accomplished directors still end up resorting to standard over-the-shoulder/master-shot coverage once they dig into the meat of a scene's dialogue, but the introduction to a scene often provides an opportunity to show off a bit.  Verhoeven, here, achieves the tactful feat of flexing his own directorial muscles while remaining absolutely loyal, moment-to-moment, to what is happening in the story.  In this, he's in the tradition of great Hollywood craftsmen from Michael Curtiz to Steven Spielberg, who subordinate themselves to the narrative but still manage to make their scenes feel ineffably cinematic.

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