RoboCop (2014) – Movie Review

In Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 ode to violence, RoboCop, he crafted a film of its time. The culture was changing, media was beginning to shape the face of news as opposed to report it, and violence in cinema was rampant. His film captured all of those elements in one whiz-bang and excessively violent package. With director Jose Padilha at the helm, and considerably less exposed limbs, OmniCorp welcomes you to RoboCop – 2.0.

The year is 2028 and crime has ravaged the world. Implementing robotic law enforcement, OmniCorp has shown the majority of civilization that crime can be contained, even controlled. The last bastion of commerce and market share remains the United States, where its people, and therefore its government, continue to reject the notion that machines can somehow trump a human being when standing firmly behind a trigger. That leaves OmniCorp CEO Raymond Sellars (a perfectly cast Michael Keaton) with an idea to overcome this troublesome obstacle by putting a man INTO the machine.

Devoted family man and Detroit cop, Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), has been left virtually blown to pieces after getting too close while investigating his partner’s shooting. This prompts Sellars to enlist Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) to collect the head and physical remnants of Murphy, meld them with his mechanics and state-of-the-art software, and create the first of its kind: RoboCop. Crime plummets, profits soar, and the public perception is changed…until RoboCop begins to remember his human side.

Remakes are one of the hardest types of films because it is so easy just to stick to the script of the original, only updating the actors and effects. RoboCop offers us something familiar, but at the same time offers enough new material to keep this reboot fresh. Yes, there are nods to the famous lines in the original, and even a tweak of the Prime Directives. Unlike the original, Murphy is aware of his past for most of the film. Also unlike the original, there is no one ‘Big Bad’ in the film. From the squad room to the boardroom, there are shades of grey and corruption everywhere in Detroit.

This reinvention instead decides to focus more on the man within the machine. For such an obvious big-budget action spectacle piece as this is, RoboCop packs more than its share of heart. A large part of the film deals with Murphy’s wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish) and son attempting to reconnect with the Alex inside the suit. There is a huge risk approaching this angle, but Kinnaman’s performance manages to convey just the right type of pain and suffering.  While this reviewer was not quite sure of Kinnaman in the early goings of the movie, his subtle choices once confined to the suit squashed those concerns and was able to draw me in to Alex’s anguish.

Heart also comes with Oldman’s once-again stellar performance as a doctor who refuses to give up on the man inside this mechanic shell. Oldman has truly transformed himself from the villain of choice early in his career, to the refined sentiment he now wears so skillfully on his sleeve in film-after-film.

Every movie like this NEEDS someone to root against, and outside of the apparent corruption of the entire city of Detroit’s police department, we have the corporation of OmniCorp itself. Presented more realistically as an actual company with numerous cogs; the motives of Sellars, right-hand man Mattox (Jackie Earle Haley), and the entire management team at OmniCorp are simple: Profit Margin. Nothing more than Business 101 at play here. It is more an ‘idea’ of corporations over human lives we are rooting against in this film, and while that does sacrifice some in terms of action scenes, it really adds to the level of originality in the film.

Not to leave out the media scrutiny out from the first film, RoboCop updates it to our current climate: that of the media dominating public perception and opinion. In the form of Pat Novak, Samuel L. Jackson gets ample time to throw down extended monologues, all focused on swaying public opinion towards the fat cats in big business. A nice, humorous touch and Jackson was born for roles like this.

Director Jose Padilha handles the action deftly, so have no doubts that you will get plenty of Robo-Action, even if it is a little lighter than the original. Padilha shoots several scenes in a first-person style that feels as though you are playing the most exciting video game on the market, and he completely avoids the dreaded shaky-cam still overused in today’s action films.

If you are an avid fan of RoboCop, as I am, and were petrified of them tarnishing your vision of a classic, there is nothing to fear here. RoboCop is both inventive and original enough to stand on its own animatronic feet, and I was in shock how much I enjoyed this reinvention.  This is the formula for how remakes should always be done going forward and I would gladly buy this again for a dollar.

If $10 is the full price of admission, RoboCop is worth $8

 

Aaron Peterson
The Hollywood Outsider