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#194 - RoboCop
José Padilha, 2014
When a police officer is suddenly murdered after investigating a criminal operation, a robotics corporation uses him as part of their prototype cyborg police officer.
When it comes to a remake of a film one has already seen, judging said remake on its own terms is difficult because more often than not it's hard to push one's opinion of its source, whether positive or negative, out of one's mind. The 2014 version of RoboCop sounds like it could have had some potential despite the first impression it makes being that of a slick yet relatively bloodless PG-13 remake of a notoriously violent B-movie. Unfortunately, RoboCop ends up filling out that first impression rather accurately, and though it's not terrible, it's hard to think of all that much to recommend about it.
Now, credit where credit's due, it does make an attempt to try to do something unique while still following the same basic narrative of the original film, most notably by trying to flesh out the development of RoboCop. Unfortunately, it's pretty telling how the film will focus on what amounts to an overextended training montage rather that develop any sufficiently compelling external conflicts or antagonists. Michael Keaton is the film's primary antagonist, who is (naturally) a corrupt CEO more concerned with the bottom line than the well-being of others. A clichéd role, of course, but Keaton does show some decent enough chops underneath it, as does Gary Oldman as the chief scientist who is conflicted about his role in the building of RoboCop. Samuel L. Jackson hams it up by playing a wildly opinionated media pundit who serves as a sort of Greek chorus to the film, though it's debatable as to how much these scenes actually contribute to the film beyond some extremely ham-fisted satire (which I should expect given how it's RoboCop, but here it just feels like an obligation) and a rather clumsy means of bookending the film. Unfortunately, the bulk of the other characters don't get much development or are portrayed particularly well. Given how much more emphasis this film places on Alex Murphy struggling to maintain his humanity as he is turned into a machine (instead of just afterwards), they probably could have gotten someone a bit more distinctive in terms of looks and personality than Joel Kinnaman shows here.
Effects-wise, well, it's decent enough, I guess. Some of the sequences do feel so overly dependent on CGI that it starts to feel like you're watching someone else play a videogame (such as one part of RoboCop's training where he is made to take on dozens of robots at once) and much of the action just feels extremely anticlimatic even without taking the logical inconsistencies and some especially unnecessary variations on the source material into account. It easily could've been a lot worse, but I don't particularly recommend it to anyone.
José Padilha, 2014
When a police officer is suddenly murdered after investigating a criminal operation, a robotics corporation uses him as part of their prototype cyborg police officer.
When it comes to a remake of a film one has already seen, judging said remake on its own terms is difficult because more often than not it's hard to push one's opinion of its source, whether positive or negative, out of one's mind. The 2014 version of RoboCop sounds like it could have had some potential despite the first impression it makes being that of a slick yet relatively bloodless PG-13 remake of a notoriously violent B-movie. Unfortunately, RoboCop ends up filling out that first impression rather accurately, and though it's not terrible, it's hard to think of all that much to recommend about it.
Now, credit where credit's due, it does make an attempt to try to do something unique while still following the same basic narrative of the original film, most notably by trying to flesh out the development of RoboCop. Unfortunately, it's pretty telling how the film will focus on what amounts to an overextended training montage rather that develop any sufficiently compelling external conflicts or antagonists. Michael Keaton is the film's primary antagonist, who is (naturally) a corrupt CEO more concerned with the bottom line than the well-being of others. A clichéd role, of course, but Keaton does show some decent enough chops underneath it, as does Gary Oldman as the chief scientist who is conflicted about his role in the building of RoboCop. Samuel L. Jackson hams it up by playing a wildly opinionated media pundit who serves as a sort of Greek chorus to the film, though it's debatable as to how much these scenes actually contribute to the film beyond some extremely ham-fisted satire (which I should expect given how it's RoboCop, but here it just feels like an obligation) and a rather clumsy means of bookending the film. Unfortunately, the bulk of the other characters don't get much development or are portrayed particularly well. Given how much more emphasis this film places on Alex Murphy struggling to maintain his humanity as he is turned into a machine (instead of just afterwards), they probably could have gotten someone a bit more distinctive in terms of looks and personality than Joel Kinnaman shows here.
Effects-wise, well, it's decent enough, I guess. Some of the sequences do feel so overly dependent on CGI that it starts to feel like you're watching someone else play a videogame (such as one part of RoboCop's training where he is made to take on dozens of robots at once) and much of the action just feels extremely anticlimatic even without taking the logical inconsistencies and some especially unnecessary variations on the source material into account. It easily could've been a lot worse, but I don't particularly recommend it to anyone.