“Despite its shortcomings, RoboCop is still an entertaining and intermittently engaging flick.” —Warren Zhang
So much of Paul Verhoeven’s original RoboCop has actually come to pass that it seems only fitting its remake, also titled RoboCop, should be a mostly serious retread of Verhoeven’s satirical classic.
The remake’s story follows similar beats: In near-future Detroit, Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman, Easy Money: Life Deluxe) is a hardworking cop who gets blown up by super violent weapons dealers. Enter OmniCorp, an allegedly benevolent supplier of drone robots with eyes set on also supplying a robotic police force to America.
Unfortunately, the whole unfeeling, Skynetian robot scheme doesn’t suit members of Congress, who have banned (ha!) drone strikes on American soil. But wait, says creepy OmniCorp CEO Raymond Sellars (a disappointingly low-key Michael Keaton, Penthouse North), what if we augmented the horrifically burned and injured Murphy with robotic limbs and our drone software?
He’d be half robotic drone cop, half fleshy, emotional man cop – RoboCop, if you will.
The plot might sound ripe for black comedy, but the new RoboCop plays most of its cards straight, ramrodding absurd, cheesy dialogue with that post-Christopher Nolan ultramarine veneer commonly found in crappy wannabes.
For a while, the new RoboCop works. Though the evil CEO conceit derails the compelling story aspect of the equation, RoboCop’s opening is thrilling and propulsive enough to sideline such flaws.
But as the uneven remake proceeds, it becomes abundantly clear the new RoboCop is a product of half-steps and compromises. RoboCop’s new, rather empty focus on Murphy’s family feels like the result of studio-mandated tweaking, as does the generally less nihilistic tone and (possibly) the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of Patriots video game vibe applied to many of the film’s drone designs.
The movie’s embarrassing attempts at satire — in the form of quasi-topical drones and Samuel L. Jackson’s (Reasonable Doubt) one-man Fox News parody — feel more like the auteurish demands of director José Padilha (Elite Squad: The Enemy Within) than any organic extension of the source material, equally as superfluous and superficial as the family side plot.
All of this is window-dressing on the campy genre film desperate to burst forth from the tight cocoon formed by its makers’ contradictory interests. The material is practically screaming B-movie to its disapproving director and panicked financiers, making the film’s subsequent attempts at being something else all the more pathetic.
That’s not to say the new RoboCop isn’t worth your time. Despite its shortcomings, RoboCop is still an entertaining and intermittently engaging flick. The action is slick and competently assembled, while many of the supporting actors turn in solid performances. It just isn’t as entertaining as it could have been or nearly as meaningful as the original.
Destined to be forgotten this time next year, the new RoboCop is part man, part machine but all cop-out.
