In an interview with the Denton Record-Chronicle, Peter Weller Robocop (1987) discussed the re-release of his film Shakedown (1988) and how the action genre has changed over the years. Shakedown tells the tale of a legal attorney (Weller) and renegade cop (Sam Elliot) teaming up to stop a corrupt cop. Weller noted that movies like that aren’t made anymore.
Modern action movies are clean
“It’s a rough-edged action movie. Today’s action movies are pretty clean..They’re about something else these days. It’s an easy parallel to watch the gentrification of New York along with the gentrification of the action film.” – Peter Weller
Weller opined that New York was a more dangerous place back then and that now you’d have to pay someone to mug you if you walked from lower Manhattan to midtown. Well, if anyone wants to really get mugged I can pick out a few places for them to go. The difference today is it’s not politically correct to show who is committing the crimes unless they are white.
#MeToo
One of the subplots in the film has a black drug dealer accused of killing an undercover police officer. In the film, the man is presumed guilty but Weller’s character argues that he is “innocent until proven guilty”. Weller likens this presumption to what is currently happening with the #MeToo movement:
“It’s the idea of the witch hunt. Accusation alone can ruin someone, and that’s a sad fact. It’s an appropriate movie to see today, because we’re dealing with this presumed guilt before innocence. We’re living more and more in that age” — Peter Weller
That’s because we’re living in the Age of Regression Peter. So-called ‘progressives’ have not learned from the mistakes of the past and they are bound and determined to repeat them.
The Shakedown special collector’s edition is now available on Blu-ray via Shout Factory.