RoboCop (2014)

 

So this weekend I was able to watch the remake of RoboCop, and as some of you know, I love the original movie. So you can guess in certain degrees I didn't like this as much. It's an ok braindead action movie with nice visuals and definitely a more star-powered cast with Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman and Samuel L. Jackson than the original (although those who played their roles did it good and felt more like the characters like Bob Morton, Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker). It starts out ok, a homage to the TV satire from the original, but with more modern standards of a agenda driven talk-show about US use of robots in an insurgence in Iran where suicide bombers try to be martyrs on live TV and a kid of one of the bombers get a knife and attempts to stab a robot, but are killed on live television. And this for some reason is the political backdrop for this remake. In the original it was a corrupt society in where a private company owned even the police, and the police threatened a strike and therefore OCP tried to bring forth a replacement that they then wanted to sell as a military unit. Here it's the opposite, the damn ED-209's and other robots work flawlessly, the kid was a threat since it had a weapon and attacked the robots (compare to the original where ED-209 had a glitch that killed an unarmed man when he gave up his weapon) and the American people for some reason feared to put the machines on the streets. Granted, we have all seen terminator and the matrix, but they never showed to malfunction or anything, really, RoboCop himself seemed to be the most unstable machine of them all since he was able to override the security and kill someone (yes, he was the bad guy, but in the original RoboCop never circumvented directive 4). Anyway after the news we get the best scene in the movie. The original RoboCop theme song to a scene mimicking the original Alex Murphy entering the police station. This also shows the problem with this remake. The original was a dystopian Sci-Fi. I don't see it in this remake. In the original the police station is in a mess, criminals thrown everywhere and the chief of police trying to get it working and the news spread out death of police and serious crimes. Here it looks rather nice. It's only in talk we get to see corruption and problems, but nothing serious. Where's the dread, missing hope and just the cynical views?

In here we get to learn about this gang leader Alex Murphy and Jack Lewis are hunting and there suspicion about traitors in the police (and they seems to know pretty well who they are). The corrupt cops tell the gang leader and gives them a car bomb. At night Murphy goes out to look at the car and gets blasted. Meanwhile OCP are trying to fix the opinion about robots among the public so they try to create a cyborg cop, but those they have are to unstable so they need someone balanced. Now, I'm gonna be unfair here, but the original wasn't stable, they say that much in the second one. Really, they explain why Murphy was able to handle the pressure of being turned into a robot. The reason being his immense sense of justice and his strong catholic belief and therefore he didn't want to self-destruct. That is gone here, in this movie he want's to die rather than live as this robot, but Gary Oldman guilt trips him into staying alive because of his family. That is also the thing, he knows who he is, what he is. In the original that was part of the story as he regained his conscious and became man again. Here they create him and decide that the human elements are interfering with his job as a police so they get rid of that. Of course only after they show him functioning for his friends and family and it was a last minute fix due to putting the whole Detroit camera footage from 10-20 years in his head. He works though, but is more machine than man. Gets the job done and public relations goes through the roof. But for some reason he gets more human and starts to investigate his own attack (since he wasn't murdered). He kills the gang leader and one of the paid cops and learns that the chief of police is the one protecting the gang. So he tries to arrest her, but is shutdown by OCP. Why? Why they stopped there I have no idea, in one end they see this as a potential to sell real robots as they can't be corrupted, but they bring up that the buyers are politicians and don't want someone to look on their dirty stuff. A pity we don't see a dirty politician. Really, this Detroit looks a lot better than current real Detroit, why need the robots? Still OCP decide that they need to get rid of RoboCop since he is acting out of line and they have a hard time controlling him coupled with that they won the PR battle. Oldman turning tails rescues RoboCop and RoboCop looks for revenge at the OCP HQ. At the roof Keaton is trying to escape and uses Murphy's wife and kid as shield together with a red tag that work as this movies Directive 4. RoboCop can't shoot, but after fighting his human way wins and he kills Keaton.

You know, this OCP is rather stupid. And really, the gang leader I have a hard time grasping what's his deal. Is he a drug lord, weapon seller or... ? Really, OCP, are they powerful or are they just rich? In the original they run the city and were cynical bastards. They sacrificed policemen/women to use as guinea pigs (that they contractually owned), they killed their own people and they used gang lords to cause destruction in Detroit to go with their plan on rebuilding it as Delta City. Boddiker was a psychopath since he didn't care about anyone and killed Bobby, Morton and Murphy. Another problem is the age. The original was 18+, this 11+. No blood. No gore. GOD!!! The original was smart, philosophical, cynical and satirical together with fun action, even awesome action and a soundtrack, visuals and even drama... THIS ONE!!! It would fit better as an origin story for Cyborg. Well, it probably did enough so we might get a RoboCop 2 and I know I will look at that, but still, it misses something.