Robocop At the Harvard Square Theater

If he had not died in the 17th century, British thinker Thomas Hobbes would have liked this movie so much that philosophy students today would be reading a book entitled "Robocop" instead of "Leviathan."

Because in a world of brutal criminals and immoral businessmen, the film tells us that the only thing that can save us from our greedy, debased selves is a half-man, half-machine "cyborg" named Robocop.

Peter Weller, who was the neurosurgeon-nuclear physicistrock star hero of Bucakroo Banzai, plays Murphy, an average police grunt in 1990s Detroit. After a gang of cop-killers wastes him, Murphy is brought to a laboratory where an ambitious yuppie brings him back to life.

Equipped with the latest technological advances in medicine and artillery, the superhuman Robocop, his memory erased and his mind reprogrammed to "uphold the law," hits the streets of the city's crime-ridden districts. A combination of the Terminator, Dirty Harry and a Campbell's soup can, Robocop shoots with pinpoint accuracy, deflects bullets like an armored car, and handles his machine-gun sidearm like a cowboy.

His talents come in handy. In the America of the 1990s, corporations have become all-powerful. They run police departments for municipal governments like caterers run restaurants for hotels. Corporate executives control everything, and as Robocop soon learns, it is a businessman named Dick who masterminded Murphy's murder.

Dick symbolizes the corporate mentality which this movie suggests is only a decade away. When asked if he can supply military firepower for his hoods, Dick answers, "We practically are the military." But corporations are actually more than the military, razing and rebuilding entire cities by employing some two million workers.

In addition to corporate dominance, this film assumes that most people will be the same greedy, barbarous creatures living out brutish little lives. Criminals will prey upon the innocent, and the authorities will be helpless to stop them. What is needed is a hero, a superhuman police officer who will replace the weak authorities and give the bad guys a dose of their own medicine. In this sense the movie echoes the populism that elected as president a man who dared Congress to "make my day" by sending him a bill to veto.

His duty understood, the cyborg takes to the streets in a Ford Taurus police cruiser, detecting crimes with his computer sensors and then swiftly disposing of the perpetration.

In one of the more amazing scenes in the movie, Robo, as he is known to his friends, breaks into an illegal drug factory and systematically kills a small army of hoods. Action/adventure fans will notice the scene as a conscious imitation of the one in The Terminator in which Arnold Schwarzenegger single-handedly destroys an entire police department.

Celebrating graphic violence in the name of justice, Robocop appeals to the same American admiration for crimebusting that made Clint Eastwood first a star, and then mayor of Carmel, California.

But Robocop is no vigilante. Unlike Dirty Harry, Robocop remains inside the law and kills only when attacked. Which is not to say that this cyborg lacks a thirst for revenge. Chance encounters with one of his murderers and with his former partner (Nancy Allen) bring back some of Murphy's memories. And in pursuing his killers, Robocop is led straight to the man behind his murder, Dick.

After many attempts to destroy Robocop, Dick sends his gang after Weller with space-age army rifles that can destroy Volkswagon vans in one shot. The climactic battle that ensues in a closed-down steel mill is exciting and original in a movie genre replete with a thousand cliches and tricks. In the end, Robocop tracks down Dick in his corporate headquarters, which is guarded by a hilariously inept robot-tank which looks like a sumo wrestler.

Like The Terminator, the action scenes combine a mix of high-tech special effects with good-old rough 'em up fighting. But this time, it's good to see all the mechanized firepower working on the side of justice instead of against it. And Robocop's combination of controlled force and execution of the laws puts Dirty Harry to shame.

In addition to fast action, a playfully cynical humor reminiscent of Buckaroo Banzai runs throughout the film. The storyline is periodically punctuated by a television news show--its slogan is, "Give us three minutes and we'll give you the world."--which charts Robocop's successes. The show is filled with such news items as the misfiring of a "Star Wars" defense system, killing three expresidents living in California. There is also a recurring commercial advertising a family board game called "Nuke 'em." And the scenes depicting the building and activation of Robocop combine humor with a biting commentary on modern science's drive for perfection at any cost.

But it's just the sort of cynicism that would bring a smile even to Hobbes' notoriously dour face.