RoboCop (2014)

Back when Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop” was released in 1987, the cyborg was described on the ads as a “stainless steel unstoppable Clint Eastwood.” As those who are fans of the original, they can tell you that it wasn’t “Dirty Harry” with a robot, but just as original co-writer Edward Neumeier said in an interview, it was a “stealth satire.” The filmmakers used comic-book hyperbole to make a near-future urbanscape ruled by corporations that own the police, and entertained by ridiculous “infotainment,” as said by Margot Harrison. It feels more psychic all the time.

The surprising news about the “RoboCop” remake, which came out about a month ago, is that director José Padilha and writer Joshua Zetumer have embraced that satire. They could have simply retold the famous story of a Detroit police officer who dies in the line of duty and is revived as a robot to kill the bad guys. Instead, they’ve brought the original’s anticorporate tendency to the fore and made it topical. What gets lost though, unfortunately, is, as Harrison put it, “a strong narrative with compelling characters.”

Set in 2028, the film opens with an O’Reilly-esque TV instigator, played by Samuel L. Jackson, praising a new generation of humanoid drones that the U.S. uses to control its enemies around the world. Why, he demands, won’t legislators allow these peacekeeping machines on American territory?

CEO of OmniCorp, Raymond Sellars, played by Michael Keaton, is equally eager on accommodating Americans to permanent occupation by his crime-fighting robots. But voters have speculations with these robots making life-and-death decisions. So Sellars and his biotech expert, played by Gary Oldman, plan a compromise: a machine controlled by the resident brain of a real, live cop.

After getting blown up with his car that was planned by a drug lord, detective Alex Murphy, played by Joel Kinnaman, is the perfect candidate. But he isn’t given a choice about being resurrected from near-dead as the RoboCop. In the film’s most graphic moment, Murphy see’s what’s left of his human body inside the robotic steel and begs to be dead.

Concerned about the human emotions that will get in the way, OmniCorp gradually limits Murphy’s free will, leaving him an appearance of independence for PR purposes. While it’s not enough to convince his wife, played by the beautiful Abbie Cornish, everyone else likes the way RoboCop cleans up the streets just fine.

The remake of “RoboCop” isn’t really about the mean streets of Detroit – which came across far cleaner and less mean than they did in the original. It’s not as profane, violent or funny, either. The action feels automatic. Murphy’s partner (Michael K. Williams), boss (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and drug-lord enemy (Patrick Garrow) are indistinct, ill-formed characters.

Oddly, the movie comes most alive in the parts dealing with OmniCorp’s internal politics, where Oldman (is described by Harrison as a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein) negotiates between Sellars’s demands and his sympathy for Murphy. We as an audience feel that sympathy as well, but at the film’s midpoint, Murphy’s head has been tinkered with so much that we don’t know who or what is the protagonist.

Kinnaman uses his face more than Peter Weller did in the original, and he’s expressive enough to give back for his stomping metal body. The problem is that, having set up RoboCop as a drone whose humanity has been heartlessly programmed out, Padliha and Zetumer can’t figure out how to give him back the meaningful agency their plot demands, or how to restore the audience’s connection with him. They get to the conclusion only by cheating.

It’s rare to see a remake that takes chances or has ideas, and for that, “RoboCop” deserves credit. By the midpoint (when Murphy becomes RoboCop, which is where it starts to slow down), in fact, its ideas have swamped the story, leaving the actors to struggle through a confused third act. On the upside, at least we know it wasn’t written by a cyborg – only humans could mess up this creatively.

In the end, the action is really well-done, the main characters (Murphy, his wife and son, played by John Paul Ruttan) are likeable, and the story of RoboCop getting back with his family is followed up in here. Jackie Earle Haley, who you will remember as Rorschach from “Watchmen” and Freddy Kruegar from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake, is in here playing one of the OmniCorp villains, and he is just a joy to watch. My rating for this remake would probably be a 6, since I give it credit for trying. There is effort put into this remake. Go see it when it comes out on DVD, it’s worth the rental, especially since 2 and 3 were horrible.

I saw this in the theater with an old friend and we were sitting in the back while there was one other person that was sitting in the front. I will admit that I'm never going to the theater with this friend again because of how aggravating he got a lot of the times.

Thanks for joining in on “RoboCop Month.” I hope you all enjoyed it, stay tuned for more of my reviews. I’ll see you next time.