10 Great Movies That Prove Blockbusters Don't Have To Be Dumb

8. Robocop

If there's one thing that Dutch-born director Paul Verhoeven knows a thing or two about it's generating controversy. While films such as Basic Instinct and Showgirls might have aimed low and suffered for it, his first great movie in the American mainstream, Robocop, proved that loud, violent films didn't have to be message-free. Make no mistake, Robocop is a truly violent movie with on-screen bloody carnage on a level which has rarely been surpassed since. Officer Murphy's gunning down at the hands of a vicious criminal gang, leaving him for dead, is one of the most graphic scenes of violence you'll ever see, and the film rarely lets up before the final confrontation with the corrupt head of evil corporation OCP. Yet Verhoeven misses no opportunity to deliver knowing swipes at everything from mindless consumerism ("I'd buy that for a dollar!"), corporate greed, the repressive nature of authoritarian politics and the nature of identity, transforming Robocop into one of the most brutally scathing satires in movie history.