Review of RoboCop (2014) by Dillinger P — 10 Nov 2014

If its a slice of entertainment your looking for, in your dystopian future features, then the remake of Robocop may just be up your street. Loyal fans however and people who dont like run of the mill rehashes will be disapointed but not aghast with this relatively okay outing.

Unlike its original itteration, Jose Padiha decides he wants to study, I say study I mean touch upon, the technological aspect, while trying to look cool, rather than pack the violent and horrifying punch the original had in abundance.

This outing focuses more on the company Omnicorp, run by an extremely talented scientist, a CEO who knows how to sell a product and a cocky marketing geek who likes to blow the CEO's trumpet. In a bid to install machine protection across the globe and especially in America, Omnicorp enlist the biased media outlet, The Novak Experience to help sway public view on robot protection on months prior to a bill being passed that will ensure human beings stay in control of the justice system.

However when Omnicorp find a loop hole in the system and after good cop Alex Murphey is almost fatally injured in a gang assanation attempt, the time seems right to make a half human, half machine defender.

This of course works well for a while, until the inevitable complications that come when machine and the human soul collide. It is pretty similar in theory and on paper to the originals, only here it focuses more on the company and their struggles, it is a neat addition and it certainly doesnt hurt the film, when the talent playing the company are phenominal actors, Gary Oldman, Samuel Jackson, Michael Keaton, Jay Baruchel and Jackie Earl Halley.

And since we spend most of our time around these people, its nice to actually have an weighted performance in such an average film, it makes it entertaining and to a certain extent bearable. We also have Murphey himself played by Joel Kinneman, who to be fair does a good enough job with what he's given and pulls of Robocop with enough believable finese, much like his distraught wife, Abi Cornish who we also spend some time with as the film examines the broken home scenario and the fight for morals within Murphey's head.

All of this sounds excellent but at a 12 rating and filled with CGI the movie becomes more like a cut scene from a computer game during the action sequences than a brutal truth its actors try desperatly to portray.

In the original the violence was so over the top in order to scare and exentuate just how brutal these machines could be, but here Robocop is cool, people love him, hes slick and pretty close to invincable.

In a latter scene he takes on 4 ED409 models and comes off not to bad. It just cheapens the entire thing. I get whats happening here, I know its being mass marketed, I get that but as a fan of what made the original stand out from the crowd and stick with us, this film never will.

Because behind all the good performance and decent concept is either CGI battles of really boring, threatless battles in which Murphey can literally take on a small army and not get touched. The film does well in the art department as well, although Detroit is definatley far to polished looking.

It's just you never feel fully immersed. It reeks of big studio blockbuster and thats what hurts this film the most. Its sure as hell not the disaster a lot of fans expected but its not what they wanted for the beloved character either.