RoboCop (2014)
Director: José Padilha
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton
Synopsis:
In a bid to overturn legislation that bars the deployment of robots on US soil, a robotics company launches a program to develop a man-machine hybrid for law enforcement.
Impressions:
Back when this was released, the trailers didn't exactly wow me, and not hearing much of anything good about it, I was quite happy to pass on this. However, when I watched through the original RoboCop trilogy, I figured I would be getting to this to complete the set. Years later, I finally got around to it and, I'll be honest with you, it was a lot better than I was expecting. It's still a bit of a mixed bag, mind you. While there are elements of satire, updated a bit for the current day, it isn't nearly as incisive as the original. However, I do appreciate that they take the story in quite a different direction rather than just retreading the first film. OCP isn't quite as comedically evil, so there is a bit of play with moral greyness, and the way Murphy's humanity is handled after his conversion is quite different. I want to be measured with my praise, but there really is enough unique to this film compared to the rest of the franchise that makes it worth considering for a watch. I particularly liked the role of Gary Oldman's Dr. Norton and Michael Keaton was pretty good as OCP boss Sellars (I have no real complaints about his performance but I felt the script fell short of really punching the character up a notch). Some of the action set pieces are a bit overdone like the finale, but I thought the warehouse shootout was quite nice, doing some cool stuff with the dark setting. Like I said earlier, it's a bit of a mixed bag and certainly won't have the iconic staying power of the original (the cruddy remix of the theme made me die a little inside and the efforts to repurpose classic lines tended to be painful) but it makes a solid effort to be its own beast and I thought it was worth the watch. Maybe you will too.
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