RoboCop 3

We've been RoboCopped! Again. Delayed for quite a while due to the mess over at Orion Pictures, this third addition to the RoboCop series has finally hit the streets. And hit the streets running, we hope. A pretty illogical plot, uninteresting characters and so-so effects are sure to keep this one a snoozer. Peter Weller must have realized that there was little for this RoboCop to do except lumber through scenes trying to figure out which side he's fighting on, so Weller was replaced by Burke as the titular hero. Once again, there's mayhem in the streets of Detroit but no one except the affected neighborhood seems to notice. There's bloodshed in the streets and people are being forcibly herded away from their apartments and off to rehabilitation camps in order to make way for the new Japanese corporate plans of the future. The extent of the anti-Japanese racial hatred portrayed in RoboCop 3 is positively astonishing. The depiction of the Japanese as malevolent, beady-eyed devils should be a national embarrassment. There are some interesting female characters here though they make little sense. Bertha (Pounder) is an urban guerrilla who leads a band of insurgents with seemingly little strategy or larger troops. Dr. Lazarus (Hennessy) is a beautiful and brilliant doctor who is RoboCop's physician (?)/ mechanic (?). Nikko (Ryan) is a little girl who is a computer whiz inexplicably able to reprogram virtually anything. Nancy Allen literally reaches the end of the RoboCop line in this episode as RoboCop's friend and partner. Comic book artist and writer Frank Miller (Sin City, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) co-wrote this story with director Dekker. But there's no warmth, no texture, no character or plot development; just a few gameboard pieces that are lamely moved around. There's even a Ninja cyborg sent over from Japan, but it's never clear what he was sent over from Japan to do -- not even to him. About as two-dimensional as a comic book, RoboCop 3 should be regarded as the last strike-out.