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"Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine," thus the Mecha-Messiah. The steroidal capitalism of the Eighties is the satirical thrust, the police force is an arm of a corporation that promises a streamlined Metropolis over the ruins of "old Detroit." A man's demise is the birth of a product, the gallant cop (Peter Weller) declared dead by the end of his first shift is the "poor schmuck" plugged into the new cyborg program. His Calvary is a limb-pulverizing fusillade, with frenetic views of his torso in flayed close-up giving way to a reverse tracking shot of memories vanishing into the ether. ("I can feel them but I cannot remember them," he says of his family, a Resnaisian lament.) The resurrected pillar of titanium clumps through the streets, from sadistic gang leader in rusty dungeon (Kurtwood Smith) to crooked honcho atop skyscraper (Ronny Cox), "life in the big city." Paul Verhoeven on blockbuster explosions like Douglas Sirk on lachrymose households, an outsider's immersion and critique. The conglomerate state's commoditized vigilantism, the glazed smirk of network news and the idiotic leer of sitcomedy as mass palliatives, a stunningly virile style blasts bloody chunks from them all. Tashlin's Madison Avenue is riotously updated, down to the Jack Benny facepalm adopted by the CEO (Dan O'Herlihy) after an unlucky yes-man is torn apart by a monstrous automaton's glitchy cannons. (Like the delirious nod to The Incredible Melting Man in the climactic shootout, wonky stop-motion animation smears artisanal grindhouse mischief on the genre's impersonal patina.) The future for Verhoeven is already at hand, the mad instant when Hollywood's testosterone fixation morphs macho flesh into a literal armor. Tsukamoto's Tetsuo films run the splatter-poetry to its logical conclusion. Cinematography by Jost Vacano. With Nancy Allen, Miguel Ferrer, Robert DoQui, Ray Wise, Felton Perry, and Paul McCrane.
--- Fernando F. Croce |