Robocop (the new one)
I was a huge fan of the original, so was in two minds about going to see it at all, not because I completely object to remakes (I do a fair bit) but because I thought my strong affection for the original would make it hard for me to relax enough to enjoy this one.
The original was so fresh and darkly comic that it was always going to be a hard act to follow, although it divided opinion at the time in the critical world. In fact I marked the release year of Robocop as the year that the BBC lead film critic Barry Norman lost his ability to be objective – I think he liked it with very grudging reservations on his first review but was quite scathing about it by the end of the year.
I’m not against remakes per se, some of my favourite films are effectively remakes – the version of The Maltese Falcon that everyone knows, is itself a remake of an earlier film, see also Ben-Hur for that matter. Even reboots can be no bad thing if Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is anything to go by. Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars (and Last Man Standing) are all remakes, the latter two of the same film. Scorsese’s The Departed takes the central plotting of Infernal Affairs, adds local Boston crime detail for one of his best movies in years.
But that said, many remakes seem like cheap attempts to cash in on the fame and success of the original – I’m told the Total Recall remake was a bit average but I haven’t seen it so can’t comment. There are times when I hear about a forthcoming remake and wonder why the hell are they making that, Manchurian Candidate being a case in point.
However, I have to report that I quite enjoyed the Robocop remake. It’s a 12A certificate so the bloody violence is dialled down a bit but not completely, it’s got some of the cynicism of the original but without the biting satire – at times it’s kind of like a Coke Zero version of Robocop with the edgy hit of sugar rush and caffeine removed.
But it tells a good enough story, one that is reminiscent of the original but different enough to claim its own space. They chose to concentrate a bit more on two threads the original mostly sidelined, namely the scientists ‘creating’ him and Murphy’s family. If I had read that the family aspect was brought in more it would have put me off, with memories of Robocop 3* but this is done quite well. I’ve got a personal stake in stories about amputees having difficulty with reconnecting to families and I thought this was done pretty well.
The science creation side is largely the story of Gary Oldman’s character which is another non-scenery chewing performance from him and is a whole other aspect mostly in the background of the original.
There’s some humour here and there but on the whole it’s a fairly solid effort. Reading back over that and I’ve qualified what I have said quite a bit – it’s got a nice sensibility regarding the power of the media and the businesses that control it (with Samuel L Jackson and Michael Keaton respectively representing those areas), the ED 209s are great and pleasingly chunky too.
The film is also asking some good questions about drones and policing by consent that aren’t being brought up enough elsewhere in the media.
So on the whole, not as good as the original but certainly better than either of the sequels in my view.
*Jetpack aside, Robocop 3 was arguably the worst of the franchise. In the first film Murphy has a son. In the third one he has miraculously changed gender.
