Review of RoboCop (2014) by Scott H — 25 Sep 2014

When I heard that they were remaking Robocop, I had a bit of a head-in-the-hands moment. Why God why I thought to myself. Unfortunately, those suspicions were well justified.

The problem was that to my generation, Robocop was on of the seminal films of its time. Yes it was violent. It's image of a future Detriot, ridden with crime and it's under-maned and under-funded Police force meant that it was gritty and the violence was key to the storyline and the creation of Robocop. However, it was a wonderful critique of America and the 1980's 'Greed is good' mentality. Key to that was OCP or Omni-Consumer Products, the company that had entered into the contract to fund and run the Police Force in Detroit. Who can forget that wonderful scene where the malfunctioning ED-209 shoots one of the staff and the Chairman turns to the CEO and says - I'm very disappointed....making clear all he's worried about is the extra money it'll cost because of the delay.

It was against this that I was very concerned when I heard about the remake. However the trailers looked promising so I was prepared to give the film a chance. However, my original feelings were well justified. The film is a bit of a mess.

The story deviates slightly from the original. In this film OCP makes military robots, keeping the peace overseas. However not in the US where such robots are banned. OCP comes up with an idea of introducing a cyborg - half man, half machine as a sort of police officer that never sleeps or gets tired. When officer Alex Murphy is badly injured in a car bomb - it's not immediately clear why - he's selected for the programme and proceeds to single-handedly clear up crime. However, when he discovers corruption within OCP, he struggles between his desire to do right and those who wish to control him.

Had this film been called, Police Cyborg or something else it would have been an ok film. However, because it's called Robocop you have no choice but to compare it to the original. And it fails on all counts to be a better film so why bother re-making it?

I'll give you an example - in this film, Alex is only badly injured but not killed. But in the original, he's killed. So in the original, they turn him into a Robot. He looks like a robot, thinks like a robot and acts like a robot. But in the remake he's a guy in an improved suit.

The plot in the remake is hard to follow, the story jumps about like a rabbit in a nettle patch, the dialogue is poor, the main character is wooden - the only decent thing is Samuel L Jackson as a TV announcer but even that is rotten compared to the original's news show - and the ending is so bad you'd only feel more cheated if they'd actually stopped the film half way through and told you to leave.

All in all one of the worst films I've seen for a while. If you want a decent Robocop film watch the original. Hell even watch Robocop 3......