Director: José Padilha.
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K. Williams, Jay Baruchel, Jennifer Ehle, Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Running Time: 121 minutes.
Certificate: 12A.
Synopsis: The year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the centre of robot technology. Their drones are winning American wars around the globe and now they want to bring this technology to the home front. After loving father and good cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp utilises their remarkable science of robotics to save Alex’s life. He returns to the streets of his beloved city with amazing new abilities, but faces issues a regular man has never had to before.
The ROBOCOP remake should have never happened. It is not needed, it is not wanted, it is far too soon. Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece only graced our screens back in 1987, and along with his other great film of the late 1980s, TOTAL RECALL, it has already been tossed into the Hollywood blender for this faddish remake treatment.
The first thing we have to do is to forget that the original movie exists (the sequels and TV series more so, for very different reasons), as this new film is very different in approach and indeed story. In the original film, our protagonist Alex Murphy is very much dead before resurrected as super-cop, RoboCop. Here, our hero is brought to the suit from the brink of death, the only part of his body functioning being his right hand, lungs, face, and most of all, heart – even his brain is transplanted.
The family element is very much at the heart of the story, with Abbie Cornish doing a reasonable job as Murphy’s grieving wife, Clara, and newcomer John Paul Ruttan as his young son David. In fact, the cast that director José Padilha has assembled is a who’s who of acting greatness, including Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Earle Haley and celebrated British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste. All deliver the goods as they very much should, and frontman Joel Kinnaman – who himself comes with a very good pedigree following the TV series The Killing – holds the screen well with his version of the character that made Peter Weller famous for a bit twenty years ago.
However the film is a struggle. There are too many bad guys and the villains that are present are not villainous enough, especially when you look back at Verhoeven’s masterpiece and the strong trio of Clarence Boddicker, Dick Jones and Bob Morton. Patrick Garrow’s Antoine Vallon is a non-entity, and Michael Keaton doesn’t get the opportunities to terrorise as corrupt OCP boss, Raymond Sellars. Sam Jackson is, well, Sam Jackson channelling a hard-line TV frontman (who even sneaks in a cheeky motherfucker at the end), and as for Jackie Earle Haley? Well, we haven’t forgiven him for Freddy Krueger yet.
That said, there’s a lot to like here. For its certificate, the film is pretty violent. Not Verhoeven violent, but at the top end of the 12A/PG-13 it has been given all the same. There are gentle nods to the 1987 version, an example being the original score teased over the title card, and some not so gentle, like the two lines lifted from the original script. Padilha brings his indie style to an all-action big-budget Hollywood film, with efforts concentrated on carving a neat little franchise out of a genuine 80s classic. The not too CGI-heavy action sequences are decent and it almost has a certain comic book superhero vibe to it. This may be an obvious intention, but the 2014 model holds on to those Mary Shelley aspects, political themes, black comedy and dark visions of the future that were so strong in the original.
This is about as good a remake we could expect for a film that really shouldn’t have been remade, and in its own right it stands quite strong. If you go into the auditorium expecting to leave with a mind full of negativity, you will leave quite the opposite, as ROBOCOP 2014 is actually quite a good movie.
[usr=3] ROBOCOP is released in UK cinemas on Friday 7th February, 2014.
MENTD
Feb 8, 2014 at 8:57 am
But why remake it? If it’s good, that’s even worse.
There is no reason for a director to do a remake other than lack of confidence.
You feel you aren’t good enough to make something great on your own
so you cop out and use the name recognition of something before.
This type of attitude should never EVER be supported. EVER.
Please for the love of God people, stop paying for crappy movies and vote
with your dollar. They’ll only stop making garbage when you stop buying it.
Dan B
Feb 8, 2014 at 11:08 am
Although I understand the sentiment here, aren’t you missing the point of a different version and one that suits the technological advantages of now?
If they’d taken the basis and called it ‘Not Robocop’ everyone would have a go, so they can’t win with people ready to hate it before they’ve seen it. Let alone people who aren’t old enough or don’t even know the original.
I do think money should be spent on original projects more than anything but I also believe that reboots and remakes are vilified before some have even seen them.