When news, on-set photos and trailers finally emerged about
the remake of RoboCop, Paul
Verhoevens 1987 action flick about a debilitated police officer consigned to a
robotic suit, you could practically feel waves of cynicism emanating from the
internet. The issue with remaking this film is pretty much the same faced by
2012’s Total Recall: it’s a big
budget eighties action movie that was massively successful and has gone on to
become regarded as a classic. The difference is that whilst Total Recall (the remake) tried too much
to change the formula of the story (Mars was replaced with Australia), the
trailers and promotional material seemed to denote that RoboCop was merely an updating of the original story with CG
effects and contemporary actors.
Considering the less than friendly response to the news of
the new movie (I can’t deny being very sceptical at first), plus the fairly
mediocre trailer, it’s a great relief to say that the remake is actually very
well done. The main moral issue that was briefly raised in the original but
sank beneath the brash action set-pieces is brought back to the forefront in
this version, best exemplified in a startlingly bleak sequence in which
detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is shown the full extent of his
transformation into the Robocop suit by Dr. Norton (Gary Oldman), unable to
cope with his less than half human existence and asks Norton to end it.
The other political and moral issues concerning the ethics
of keeping Murphy alive, the blurred lines between man and machine and the
issue of technology as protection are all raised in their own distinct ways,
the former two being played out between Oldman’s character and Sellars, the
owner of Omnicorp (Michael Keaton giving his best shot at a morally suspect,
moustache-twirling villain), and the latter brought to the forefront by Samuel
L. Jackson as a Fox News style presenter in a series of propaganda-like news
reports, claiming that America is ‘Robophobic’ and presses the case for America
to exploit its drone technology from the Middle East on home soil (rather
symbolic considering the controversy surrounding the real-life use of such
drones by the US Army in its overseas operations).
As for the action sequences, the main selling point for most
people, they’re fairly well executed, packing a great punch in terms of sound
design and visual effects, the use of handheld cam placing the audience in the
thick of the fight, although it should be noted that this handheld element does
find its way, rather distractingly, into the much more quiet, intimate scenes involving
Murphy’s wife Clara (Abbie Cornish) and son (John Paul Ruttan). This may be an
attempt to liven up these small vignettes as the acting by Cornish is a little
uninspiring and the brief moment she shares with her husband before his
accident seems fairly rushed. This means investment in their relationship is a
little on the light side, and the family drama supposedly at the heart of the
story seems like a sideshow in comparison to the much more interesting scenes
between Murphy and Norton, the latter played sublimely by Oldman, who seems to
only improve with age.
So on the whole, RoboCop
may lack the family drama we were promised and some of the acting is less
than impressive, but the perfectly fine, nuts and bolts actions sequences are
up there with the original and the moral/political issues at its heart are
still relevant and hold their own amongst the other elements of the story. A
worthy remake, but a fairly functional film on its own.
3.5 Stars
3.5 Stars
