It follows officer Alex Murphy who is a tough undercover cop trying to solve a case with his partner Lewis. After a failed attempt to arrest crime boss Antoine Vallon he orders a hit on Marphy as revenge. A minion plants a car bomb on Murphy's car resulting in him being hospitalised with extreme injuries. His Wife agrees to have him turned into to a cyborg police officer named Robocop.
The film is okay the action scenes are good similar to GI Joe or any number of superhero films where a meta human fights Robot or big Robots. There's a fun shoot out pitting Robocop against an army of drones and a fine fight against a bunch of ED209s. The second attempted arrest of of Vallon is provides a shoutout in the dark lit mostly by gun fire. This is serviceable but nothing special it reminded me of Hit Girls rescue of KickAss from the movie KickAss except it lacked the same emotional impact or the excitement of the underdog overcoming the odds. Vallon was unfortunately very underdeveloped and had little interaction with Murphy or Robocop due to his hands of nature so there was little reason to get emotionally invested in Robos pursuit.
When I first wrote this I totally forgot to even mention Joel Kinnaman so I guess he turned in a largely forgettable performance. To be fair to him he was fine at pretending to be a robot and his voice was good though not as good as Peter Wellers.
When I first wrote this I totally forgot to even mention Joel Kinnaman so I guess he turned in a largely forgettable performance. To be fair to him he was fine at pretending to be a robot and his voice was good though not as good as Peter Wellers.
Other than the action which for an action movie was a bit thin on the ground especially when compared to all the debating and discussion about man versus machine. I really enjoyed Gary Oldman as the scientist/doctor who felt torn over his actions in the creation of Robocop. The rest of the characters were a little bland Micheal Keaten was fine, Jay Burchil provided a couple of smiles as did Micheal K Williams as Lewis. Jackie Earle Hayley was an interesting and enjoyable character who I would have liked to have seen more of. Robocops Wife and Son have a larger role in this film though other than looking good Abbie Cornish did little other than blubber her way from scene to scene. Although there was ample time to allow everyone an opportunity to shine non of the characters really stood out as memorable.
There were a handful of propagand broadcasts sprinkled throughout hosted by pro robot supporter Sam Jackson. These fell a bit flat for me as they were to similar to actual news broadcasts that can be seen on Fox News US though not as extreme.
The tone of the film throughout is very serious and pleased with itself for having digs at US foreign policy near the start a couple of stolen lines from the previous Robo film, a dig at Transformers and other various bits of head nodding to the previous film.
As I stated at the start Robocop 2014 is okay though lacks anything that stands out as new or memorable best just to wait for it to be on Netflix.
If you do have Netflix just watch actual RoboCop as it is miles better than RoboCop 14. The characters are better, the hero is more tragic, the action is far more memorable, there is a very genuine sense of danger for our heroes as the villains are totaly mental, the film is witty, smart and just plain entertaining! There is also an actual point to the existence of RoboCop in this version. Detriot is totally going to help it seems like a genuinely scary place to live and the police clearly cant cope. So they produce RoboCop to try to clean up the streets. In comparison the new film seems to just want to make him for the sake of making him. As theres no sense that crime is out of control or particularly a problem in this films future detroit.
So go watch actual RoboCop!!!
So go watch actual RoboCop!!!
