RoboCop

The effort for interesting psychology and the ambiguity of both the main and secondary characters is worth praise, and so, thanks God, is the absence of a dull, straightforward plot. What was popular in the 1980s would definitely not be as popular now (or only in a new guise). Surprisingly, the film fails the most in the action, which is both scarce and not great. From a 100 million action movie, I would expect a greater impact. At the same time, it is evident that they lacked skill for a grander and, above all, more detailed production, clearly visible, for example, in the similarly expensive but much better executed Minority Report. (02/15/2014)

A lot of movies influenced me throughout my childhood and Robocop was one of those movies. Which is why I thought I won’t be too happy about another 1980s action movie remake. But then I saw some reviews claiming that this remake wasn’t bad at all, which is actually why I decided to watch it. And I must admit that it had its upsides, especially actors like Samuel L. Jackson or Gary Oldman, who did all the hard work on this movie. Joel Kinnaman wasn’t quite as good as them. But why should he since he appears as a human in the beginning only to come back as an emotionless Robocop. I was also a little shocked that this movie didn’t have a proper story. They create a robo-human who is so perfect that he has no competition. Or at least until a dozen lunatics start shooting missiles at him that could tear a giant apart. (09/13/2014)

The big surprise is the powerful screenplay which squeezes all it can from the topic and the story even has some overlap of relevance. It takes a slightly different route to the original RoboCop and that certainly does no harm. Routine action is a little restrained, only letting go during the final battle with the chickens. Keaton and Oldman steal the movie, dominating the screen in their scenes together. Alex Murphy has also gone through a certain change. Although Kinnaman doesn’t equal Weller’s qualities, he puts on a really good performance. The ace up the sleeve is director José Padilha who, despite an exhausting struggle with the studio, was able to push a lot of ideas into the project (the studio rejected nine out of every ten ideas) and details that push RoboCop upward. Next time, give it freer rein and it’ll be bombastic. (02/06/2014)

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%] (02/06/2014)

It isn’t usual for an expensive blockbuster (and especially a remake of an action movie of the eighties) to put its money on ambiguous characters, a moral dilemma about the limits of “humanness" or a criticism of America as the self-proclaimed “global policemen who should clear up their own mess at home"; all of this of course (unfortunately) toned down to large-budget proportions and diluted by the mandatory (and superfluous) SFX action ingredient, but all in all the course they chose was still entertaining, I tell you. (02/07/2014)