Robocop
Director: José Padhila
Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton
Length: 118 minutes
Country: USA
“Crime has a new enemy” reads the slogan printed all over marketing for the new Robocop. Not that new really is it? If ‘new’ means ‘conceived almost three decades ago’ for you then I recommend getting yourself a brand new Commodore 64, or a new pair of legwarmers to wear while you listen to that new band Bon Jovi. In other ‘news’ the Berlin Wall has been broken down now, so stop worrying about it.
I‘m going to let it slide; nowadays to be facetious about yet another Hollywood remake is about as pointless as banging your head against a wall made of Hollywood remakes. Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987) was a brutally violent, endlessly entertaining action flick that was as unique as it was satirical. José Padhila’s Robocop is a mixed bag; in many ways it’s as lifeless as the ‘Robo’ part of its protagonist, but in others it slickens the original concept to provide at least some exciting moments, even if I guarantee you’ll forget them the moment you’ve left the cinema.
While the story has received some standard remake spring-cleaning, the central theme of man versus machine remains unaltered. In fact, it’s thrust upon you in the film’s opening moments – the year is 2028 and giant corporation Omnicorp have sent a batch of robotic protectors round the globe in an attempt to show Americans why they too should live under a militarized machine regime. Unsurprisingly it’s not working particularly well, and Omnicorp’s CEO (Michael Keaton) knows it. He begins research into making a more personal, humanlike robot – a man inside a machine.
As fate would have it, decent cop, family man, and recently dismembered Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is perfect for his plan. Two billion dollars and a few scenes later, and Murphy has been reconstructed as a badass android, complete with artificial limbs and a visor that slips down over his eyes whenever the film needs him to look cool. The rest of the story builds on this excuse to have said badass android with bad guy shoot ‘em ups, motorbike stunts and political commentary that, to put it kindly, fails to be subtle.
What really gets me about Robocop is how its visual improvements add to the film one moment, only to take from it the next. There’s no doubt that Murphy looks much better in a sleek black suit, and the big reveal of his newly constructed body, the camera circling around him in a dream sequence which fades as he awakens, is deftly handled. The problem is that the film feels it needs to give so much scientific explanation for what’s going on that it removes any sense of character or mystery. A lingering shot of Murphy, disembodied with only his head and vital organs seems to be saying ‘look what we can do with special effects’ when really you just want him to go out and start shooting bad guys already.
What it lacks in gratuitous violence it makes up for in tension as Murphy’s robotic and human sides begin to conflict.
Indeed there’s a certain blandness that runs through the film, a certain feeling of going through the motions that may just be because I’ve watched enough modern action films to know the formula by now. Or it could be because the characterization is inconsistent, the cheeky satirical undercurrent has been replaced by bold faced statements about corruption, and an increased emphasis on the relationship between Murphy and his wife doesn’t work because the two actors have little to no chemistry.
The film is also partly damned by its 12A rating, which prevents it taking any of the risks the original did, let alone expanding on them. Fans who want to see Murphy’s gruesome bullet dissection from the original will instead have to deal with a censored, rather cheap looking car bomb, as well as a lot of scenes being more robot-on-robot than mano-a-mano. Naturally, this also means the brilliantly sadistic Clarence Boddicker, a key antagonist of the first film, gets left by the wayside. His equivalent in this iteration, Raymond Sellers, is so boringly dealt with that he’s more of a prop than a character.
But I didn’t say Robocop was a mixed bag for the hell of it. It does pick up steam in the third act, and what it lacks in gratuitous violence it makes up for in tension as Murphy’s robotic and human sides begin to conflict, and the attempts of Omnicorp to further dehumanize him turn sour. To their credit, Gary Oldman and Samuel L Jackson are both fun to watch as the doctor in charge of Murphy’s remanufacture, and a pro-robot Fox news host caricature respectively.
Nevertheless, even if you are able to forgive the film’s hang-ups and just relax into it with a tub of popcorn, it’s simply impossible to shake the feeling that this Robocop just doesn’t need to exist. With a clear shift to a much younger audience and a warm embrace of modern movie cliché, it’s not looking to break boundaries, but merely to conform. If you’re going to try to do something that’s already been done, at least try and give it something new to say. Robocop, as shiny a distraction as it might be, doesn’t, which will leave a lot of fans asking why it bothers to say anything at all.
Comments