Short takes: ‘RoboCop,’ ‘Galaxy Quest’ and ‘A Most Wanted Man’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
June 4, 2021

Between 1987 and 1997, one of the most directors in Hollywood was a Dutchman. Paul Verhoeven began his movie career making documentaries in the Netherlands navy before transitioning to television in 1969. He directed six Dutch-language features from 1971 through 1983 before making his English-language debut in 1985 with the historical drama Flesh+Blood starring Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Verhoeven’s next film, RoboCop, was a huge hit that established his star. He followed that 1987 feature with several successful films: the science-fiction actioner Total Recall (1990), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and inspired by a Philip K. Dick story; the racy thriller Basic Instinct (1992), with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone; the sudsy drama Showgirls (1995), now considered a major dud; and Starship Troopers (1997), loosely adapted from Robert Heinlein’s novel of the same title.

RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers form a loose thematic trilogy. In these movies, the future is simultaneously grim, cheesy and filled with over-the-top violence. Of the trio, RoboCop is set closest to the present time — there are no colonies on Mars, let alone in other star systems, and in fact the action is entirely confined to the city of Detroit.

Two reporters search for truth in the nation’s capital in the taut 2009 thriller ‘State of Play’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
April 18, 2017

State of Play, the 2009 feature starring Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams as Washington newspaper reporters, is a well-paced political thriller with some conventional notions about power and some curious notions about journalism.

The movie, co-written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (World War Z, Deepwater Horizon), Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, Duplicity and Rogue One) and Billy Ray (Breach, Shattered Glass and Captain Phillips), is based on a 2003 British miniseries of the same name written by Paul Abbott. But it feels thoroughly American, despite having a New Zealander (Crowe) portraying a blue-collar Pittsburgh native and being directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), a Scotsman who’s mainly helmed documentaries.

The film opens with a stone-faced man (Michael Berresse) pumping bullets into a teenage junkie (LaDell Preston) who had the misfortune of crossing him and a pizza delivery man (Dan Brown) who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Later that morning, as a Washington Globe crime reporter named Cal McAffrey (Crowe) begins investigating why an unknown single shooter has apparently attacked two very disparate targets, a young congressional aide named Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer) dies after being pushed into the path of an oncoming Metro train.