Robocop

For fans of the original Robocop, the news that José Padilha was resuscitating the Robocop franchise may have been disheartening, especially since Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 film about a police officer who is cybernetically revived to purge a metropolis it's vice still stands up to the test of time. Any attempt at rebooting such a cinematic jewel will always provoke the wrath of apoplectic fanboys who would commit the Japanese ritual suicide of seppuku (Please see Robocop 3) rather than endure another redundant reboot (à la last year’s dismal reimagining of Verhoevens’s other film, Total Recall).

Verhoeven’s Robocop was an intelligent social satire hidden beneath the conventional accoutrements of an 80s action flick. The lumbering armour-clad gendarme was as overzealous as he was impractical. But that was the charm – the story is an unashamed tongue-in-cheek satire. Robocop is a ridiculous solution to crime in a ridiculous dystopian society, as fascist as it is farcical.

Padilha’s Robocop places more importance on realism. Our hero’s new design makes him more practical and the path towards his conception/construction is also more smoothly presented. In this film, private military contractor, OCP produces drones and outsources work to China– an organisation with slightly more contemporary depth than the comic book style ‘men in suits’ of Robocop senior.

Technological advancement and its altruistic potential is particularly significant in this film. It is OCP’s technology that saves Detroit cop and family man Alex Murphy from disability and death, as it does with other veterans of martial conflict. Although artificial design is somewhat celebrated, the machinations of OCP’s CEO played by Michael Keaton, reveal man’s propensity to abuse this tool in the pursuit of profit.

The satire of American business and politics runs strong in the blood of Padilha’s movie. Murphy’s transformation from man to product through the 21st century business alchemy of marketing and PR is an interesting addition. Our hero’s technocratic puppet-masters want him to appeal to the American people at any cost – a fiery indictment on the hypocritical and vacuous corporate culture that pervades society today.

Ironically, the new film is itself a clinically repackaged version of the original Robocop. Long gone are the gory blood squib splatters so prevalent in the original, having now been replaced by lightweight and suggested violence in order to placate the censors and sell the film to the masses. Padilha’s sanitised version changes the fall of Murphy, the horrific dismemberment that helped the audience empathise with the character. Instead, the new film features a car-bomb plot which lacks the same dramatic effect.

Swedish American actor, Joel Kinnaman, plays the eponymous law enforcer in a performance which is solid, if unremarkable. Although Kinnaman lacks the charisma of the underrated Peter Weller, his supporting cast somewhat make up for the shortfall. Gary Oldman plays a morally-tortured scientist in charge of the Robocop project, a new addition to the Robocop mythos and a modern day version of Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. Samuel L Jackson also contributes with an acerbic take on right-wing television punditry.

To summarise, Robocop is an enjoyable contemporary action romp.Despite its slick artificial presentation it lacks the organic heart of its original source material.