I don’t hate remakes like most people. In some cases (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Maltese Falcon) the remakes are actually better than their originals. Granted there are some bad ones, but I’ve chosen to strike those from my mind. But the recent vision of Robocop falls into that gray area in the middle where it’s not a bad remake, it’s just useless.
The original, filled with buckets of blood, dark comedy and satire to shine a light on the state of the government, is here washed down to a bloodless PG-13 where everyone marches around with grim, uber-serious looks on their face. You’d think looking at them that in the future the floors are replaced with scattered Legos. Especially our hero, Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) who looks as if he has to go the bathroom really bad but people are sneaking in just as he is about to get up.
The story stays the same – a man deformed in a car bombing by some thug whom we only see a few times is then made better, stronger and faster than he was before. He then uses his newfound powers to fight crime and discover his killer, which is done so easily because: A: His technology gives him detective skills that makes Sherlock Holmes look like Nancy Drew, and B: He already knew who did it. Then it turns out the corporations that built him blah, blah, blah. You know how these things work.
It was a surprise, however, that during all these robo-raids that, despite modern technology – both in the film and what they had available to make the movie – how uninspired and tepid all the action scenes are. He rides in on his motorcycle, shoots up the room and then leaves. There is just a lack of “cool” to the whole thing a movie like this should warrant.
There is an exception during the climax when he fights some giant robots as if he was Spider-Man. There wasn’t even a montage of cool, crime-fighting shenanigans. Come on, even Rocky had a montage.
But there is a minor silver lining in the fact they did spend a sufficient amount of time focusing on his family and how the men who created him were simply using him for political gain. Even though these elements are shopworn to the standard action pic, the thought is still nice.
There’s not much to say on a movie like this. Nothing despite some plotting issues can be considered bad. Everything may be generic, but definitely not bad. The word I used before is perfect: useless.
In an interview with cast member Sam Jackson, he claimed that despite wanting to work with the director (Jose Padiha), he had “no idea why it was being remade.” When your actors are saying that even during the promotion period, you’re in trouble.
