ROBOCOP 2014 IS SURPRISINGLY NOT BAD

I am a fan of the original Robocop, and when I saw the trailers for the remake I feared the worst. It seemed like this remake would suck the heart and core message out of the original classic, and turn Robocop into another failed attempt at cashing in on a recognizable name (Total Recall 2012 anyone?). Luckily, I was wrong for a change.

Robocop 2014 follows the same plot as the original. Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), a hard working, loyal and uncorrupt Detroit cop, is seriously injured in a car bombing. Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), president of mega-corporation Omnicorp, sees an opportunity and seizes it. He has been trying to introduce robotic law enforcement into the the city, however the general public seems uneasy about the idea. In Murphy, Sellars sees what could be the face for his robotic efforts and a way to get the public on his side. He orders Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), head of the Omnicorp labs, to rebuild Murphy into a human/robot hybrid they dub Robocop. However, Murphy's basic humanity soon becomes seen as a threat to their perfect product. The fight is on as Murphy tries to hold on to the remaining shreds of his humanity while attempting to keep crime at bay and solve his own murder.

Robocop 2014 is restrained by a PG-13 rating. I understand why the studio pushed for a PG-13 here, to bring more people in and to better target the coveted teen demographic. However, the film does have a genuinely great message that I'm pretty sure most teens either will not get or just won't care about (more on that message later), and the PG-13 only serves to water down the film.The violence is at times thrilling, but it never is able to match the extreme lengths of the original's. Robocop also suffers from a deflated climax (especially when compared to the original's), and the way Murphy sustains his injuries that ultimately lead to his transformation is just weak.

This new remake is also quite humorless except for when it deals with Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson), an extreme right-wing pundit who owns his own Bill O'Reilly-esque show (The Novak Element) and reports on the news with his own biased and not-so-hidden agenda. It's clear the film is taking punches at Fox News, and it does so in a fun and almost tongue in cheek way with Jackson nailing his small role (He's perfect).

Robocop has a pretty good cast that never fully manage to make their roles memorable. Joel Kinnaman makes for a decent Murphy. When first turned into Robocop, he still has his humanity intact (a drastic shift from the original) but later it is wiped clean. I'm not so sure I like this angle, but I do understand it was done in an attempt to strengthen the message here. While the attempt doesn't completely work, the misguided effort is somewhat appreciated. Michael Keaton and Jackie Earle Haley (who plays Rick Mattox, a for hire military expert) are both criminally underused and get barely any character development. The same goes for Abbie Cornish and John Paul Ruttan (who play Murphy's loving wife and son), who are only brought in when the emotional element of the film is needed. Easily the best actor here is Gary Oldman (no surprise there), who plays a doctor that is struggling to keep his ethics and morals as Keaton's Sellars continually applies more and more pressure on him to get the job done.

Unlike Total Recall 2012, Robocop makes the very wise choice to keep the original film's core anti-corporation message. As I said before, the film tries to strengthen the message but it's an entirely unsuccessful attempt. The message is still in plain sight for anyone who is wise enough to notice it, and the film spends a good amount of time focused on this message (basically people are nothing but pawns to corporations, and the public are nothing but sheep that can be easily led either by corporations or the media). I do think the message is a good reflection of how the times are today, and thus while a Robocop remake wasn't necessary, this was a good time to make it.

I'm going to take a brief moment to talk about the ED-209's (or as I lovingly call them, the EDdys). They were one of my favorite parts of the original film, as they were a product that seemed bad-ass but were ultimately fuck-ups in the long run. Here, they are functional and work exactly as they were built to. There is no humor to the Eddy's in Robocop 2014. It's still good to see them pop up in all of their two scenes, but I still prefer the ones from the original.

While Robocop 2014 can't match the fun, bloodiness, brutality, humor, and message of the original......this remake is still by all accounts much better than it should have been. While it's not a perfect product, it's a functional one that should get you thinking and that you should be fairly entertained by. It works for what it is.

3 Stars