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
Special Features: Deleted Scenes, Omnicorp Corporate Product Videos, Featurettes: The Illusion of Free Will, To Serve & Protect, The Robocop Suit.
First of all, it’s easy to negate remakes or reboots and wax lyrical about their purpose or the advantages of having a new angle but what it always comes down to, beyond anything, is the story and how it tries to tell and achieve it – regardless of originals.
In ROBOCOP (2014), we’ve jumped out of the gritty, violent late 80s and delved into the paranoia of nearly 30 years later, where the world is a lot more aware but evidently just as concerned over things beyond their control. While Jose’s ROBOCOP tries to tell a story where machine and robots can co-exist and fight for what’s right, it also fails to exploit on a few good ideas and instead intersperses with obvious nods towards drone attacks, a flailing United States ‘empire’ of some kind and gives out a whole host of mixed messages.
As good as Joel Kinnaman is as reconstructed as-good-as-dead cop Alex Murphy, he’s let down by a story that flits too quickly between a basic revenge tale, with something that reminded me more of Stanley Tucci’s THE HUNGER GAMES-type game show/chat show host with Samuel L Jackson’s media coverage. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr Jackson is once again tremendous in an empowering role but where his character’s place in this story is completely devoid of purpose despite the source material.
I’ve never been a fan of television, or newspaper recaps to tie a story together, especially when it feels as haphazard as this one and feels more like an ad flick, than a story progression. ROBOCOP is bursting with hope and clever moments but lacks the focus to really pull it off and give us something refreshing and in some ways, that’s a let down to the great character within.
Nothing this big should be so forgettable or concluded so easily with so much talent on board. It also concerns when the momentary homages are the main things you recall, or even waiting for. What that encourages is while you’re trying to judge the film on its own merits, it falls into the trap of trying to be too clever and missing this point.
Kinnaman deserves much better from this and much like the recent TOTAL RECALL remake, with the also excellent Colin Farrell, the whole re-packaged platform is deftly disappointing.
[usr=2] ROBOCOP is available on Blu-ray and DVD now.
