In the future, the city of Detroit is overrun with crime. Violence occurs daily, drugs flood the streets, and no one feels safe. Even the police are powerless to protect the citizenry; police are routinely (and viciously) murdered. In an effort to combat this dystopian state of affairs, the city has granted control of the police department to Omni Consumer Products, hoping that the corporation will come up with some technological solution to the problem. It’s a difficult and highly-competitive challenge within OCP: two competing programs vie for the CEO’s approval. The first has totally robotic walking battle-tanks patrolling the streets. The second has a human police officer merged with cybernetic technology in order to make the perfect cop. When the former program causes disaster in a demonstration, the latter is given the green light. So, murdered cop Alex Murphy is technologically revived and becomes “RoboCop.”

RoboCop proves highly effective, until memories of his human life begin to seep into his consciousness. As the memories persist, he tracks down his murders, leading him to the city’s biggest and most ruthless crime boss. As he climbs to the top of this criminal organization, he finds that the city’s problem is much bigger than was first thought, and that there is more to OCP than meets the eye. With everyone against him save for his former partner, RoboCop fights a lone crusade against power, corruption, and the technological Utopianism of the city’s corporate government!

In this episode of The Road to Hell, Nicky and Danny analyze the messages of this seemingly silly 80s action movie. Behind the gore and the cheese, there are valuable insights to be gleaned concerning the complicated relationship between technology and power. This movie also touches brilliantly on the nature of the true “Deep State,” a term whose meaning has unfortunately been obfuscated in recent years. For all this and more on the message behind the movie, tune into this episode of The Road to Hell film review podcast!