RoboCop

A lot of movies influenced me throughout my childhood and Robocop was one of those movies. Which is why I thought I won’t be too happy about another 1980s action movie remake. But then I saw some reviews claiming that this remake wasn’t bad at all, which is actually why I decided to watch it. And I must admit that it had its upsides, especially actors like Samuel L. Jackson or Gary Oldman, who did all the hard work on this movie. Joel Kinnaman wasn’t quite as good as them. But why should he since he appears as a human in the beginning only to come back as an emotionless Robocop. I was also a little shocked that this movie didn’t have a proper story. They create a robo-human who is so perfect that he has no competition. Or at least until a dozen lunatics start shooting missiles at him that could tear a giant apart. (13/09/2014)

Values (moral, personal, familial), likable anti-American critique (toothless, inoffensive), action with only one truly distinctive scene (the warehouse), and the strangled potential of wanting to play out at least one of the themes a little stronger. Or, it’s a perfectly Hollywood fluffy nothing that is held afloat only by Kinnaman's undeniable charisma. 3 ½. (10/12/2014)

Somewhere half-way. I don’t glorify Verhoeven’s classic, so I went into Padilha’s remake without prejudice, and yet it was unable to win me over in any significant way. As an action flick, the action scenes in Robocop aren’t exciting, and as a satire, it’s not sharp enough, even though it has some promising hints. Overall it’s unremarkably bland. (05/05/2014)

The big surprise is the powerful screenplay which squeezes all it can from the topic and the story even has some overlap of relevance. It takes a slightly different route to the original RoboCop and that certainly does no harm. Routine action is a little restrained, only letting go during the final battle with the chickens. Keaton and Oldman steal the movie, dominating the screen in their scenes together. Alex Murphy has also gone through a certain change. Although Kinnaman doesn’t equal Weller’s qualities, he puts on a really good performance. The ace up the sleeve is director José Padilha who, despite an exhausting struggle with the studio, was able to push a lot of ideas into the project (the studio rejected nine out of every ten ideas) and details that push RoboCop upward. Next time, give it freer rein and it’ll be bombastic. (07/02/2014)

In the first half, RoboCop observes the psychology of transforming a human into a robot and addresses the issue of ethics without lacking the proper visual effectiveness. In the second half, the film speeds up and the well-built dramaturgy falls apart (with a twist that probably not even the creators – including the screenwriter – understand, when RoboCop chooses to address his own past over dealing with the ongoing crimes) and the interesting science-fiction movie becomes a dumb action flick. It seems as if José Padilha’s film was cut and shortened by the producers to satisfy more consumerist audiences who don’t need more than said dumb action. And that’s a pity. The cynical view of US foreign policy and a few good jokes (“I’m just from marketing!”) suggest that the new RoboCop could have been a worthy remake, cleverly reflecting society in the new millennium. (15/02/2014)