Directed by:
José PadilhaCinematography:
Lula CarvalhoComposer:
Pedro BromfmanCast:
Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Abbie Cornish, Michael Keaton, Jay Baruchel, Aimee Garcia, Jennifer Ehle, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Earle Haley (more)VOD (5)
Plots(1)
In RoboCop, the year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Overseas, their drones have been used by the military for years, but have been forbidden for law enforcement in America. Now OmniCorp wants to bring their controversial technology to the home front, and they see a golden opportunity to do it. When Alex Murphy - a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit - is critically injured, OmniCorp sees their chance to build a part-man, part-robot police officer. OmniCorp envisions a RoboCop in every city and even more billions for their shareholders, but they never counted on one thing: there is still a man inside the machine. (StudioCanal UK)
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Reviews (13)
Unlike many, it would appear, it was clear to me beforehand that Hollywood would not allow Padilha to fumble through the film the way he has done with his slum opuses, so I am thrilled with the result. Especially given that he still retained his directorial handwriting and immense talent for sustaining the momentum of sequences that could easily have been built on cutting between three static shots. As a result, the average shot length is longer than most genre trailers, and the camera often dances around action sequences to keep an overview of seemingly unanchored action that is only pinned down by set pieces (a shootout in an alley, a mock battle in a factory hall, the destruction of an ED-209 in a lobby). The reshoots from the long shots, which Padilha is very fond of using to capture action, however challenging it is to seeing the protagonist's point of view, are so smooth and non-evasive that any Branagh could envy them, and I generally enjoyed the whole thing. Compared to its predecessor, it does lack the punkish revelry in the destruction of both body and property, but while it retains the obligatory quotes, it doesn't routinely copy individual elements and finds its own alternatives to them. Namely, for example, Robocop defeating the ED-209 mecha-guards, whose firepower superiority is once again countered by their lack of agility, but this time it is their sheer numbers and thus their tactical inadequacy that is used to defeat them.
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In the first half, RoboCop observes the psychology of transforming a human into a robot and addresses the issue of ethics without lacking the proper visual effectiveness. In the second half, the film speeds up and the well-built dramaturgy falls apart (with a twist that probably not even the creators – including the screenwriter – understand, when RoboCop chooses to address his own past over dealing with the ongoing crimes) and the interesting science-fiction movie becomes a dumb action flick. It seems as if José Padilha’s film was cut and shortened by the producers to satisfy more consumerist audiences who don’t need more than said dumb action. And that’s a pity. The cynical view of US foreign policy and a few good jokes (“I’m just from marketing!”) suggest that the new RoboCop could have been a worthy remake, cleverly reflecting society in the new millennium.
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Somewhere half-way. I don’t glorify Verhoeven’s classic, so I went into Padilha’s remake without prejudice, and yet it was unable to win me over in any significant way. As an action flick, the action scenes in Robocop aren’t exciting, and as a satire, it’s not sharp enough, even though it has some promising hints. Overall it’s unremarkably bland.
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Three years ago it was Rise of the Planet of the Apes, whilst this year Robocop surprises. And I'm surprised, given how much I love the original film, that my only reservations are about Alex Murphy's awkward representative. All they had to do was either find a more sympathetic person or leave most of his face hidden in the helmet for 90% of the film. Fortunately, there is a minor paradox - most of the attention is drawn to the other "supporting" characters, led by the excellent Gary Oldman, thanks to whom one doesn't really notice Kinnaman's non-acting. The dialogue scenes are on par with the action scenes, the direction of everyone is very decent, the special effects are fine, and I quite liked the music when listening to it on its own. Fortunately, the satirical undertones have not completely disappeared, thanks mainly to the character of Samuel L. Jackson and his TV show.
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This film could serve as a demonstration of how contemporary Hollywood sometimes bets on the brain drain of progressive personalities from other cinematographies and then tries to tame them in the machine. Padilha’s "action social drama" manuscript is there at the beginning, and seeing the editing and shooting from "another world" is, of course, a refreshing but sedentary rating, a bit of enigmatic magic with musical dramaturgy as a result, and the surprisingly extinct kinetics of Carvalho's camera just turn the action into padding. The creators also sometimes provocatively associate it with demanding conversations about the essence of the main character. The new RoboCop is actually a bit of a radical and staid conversational drama about a man from whom remains only a piece of his face and several organs. Most of the violence from the original moves from the streets to the body of the protagonist, who spends more than half of the film dealing with his identity, family, and getting used to the suit. Thanks to well-written dialogues and great actors, it works. Ideologically, the film evokes the irony of the original through a right-wing talk show and a parody of the marketing abuse of Murphy / RoboCop as a product for the masses. There is also a noticeable shift in the acceptance of a globalized perspective and the transformation of the corporate sphere from "sharks in suits" to a casual field of philanthropists in cool outfits. While Verhoeven once made a film that can be consumed as a perfect product of American culture and as its harsh parody, "liberal fascist" Padilha and his team are much more literal. Some people still have a problem deciphering it, but the critical storyline pointing to the mechanization of war and justice is quite understandable. Combined with thoughts about transforming man into a machine, it becomes quite a productive thing to think about. The new RoboCop will never offer the total "blood, shit and mud" pleasure of the original, which it tries not to refer to too ostentatiously (and when it does, then it does so ironically - the use of Poledouris’ motif as the signature tune of a right-wing agitation show). It looks for its own way to get to the topic. Therefore, despite the wheels falling off and the somewhat dubious gradation of the second half, it makes sense. Special thx to always fabulous Oldman, easygoing armyJobs Keaton and the very precisely vulnerable Kinnaman. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for it, but it will probably just pass us by like (the little more problematic) Elysium. I just hope that we will see the day when the ratio of realized and unrealized ideas in the fights between producer and inventive creator goes the other way. [75%]
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Gallery (94)
Photo © Sony Pictures
![RoboCop - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/166/215/166215761_7fe347.jpg)
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