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 (2)
Plots(1)
In the year 2028, greedy conglomerate OmniCorp uses robotic technology to transform critically injured Officer Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) into the ultimate crime fighter. He's part man, part machine... he's RoboCop! Back on the streets, Murphy is hardwired for law enforcement, but the mind and memories of the human inside long to take over... and the results could be catastrophic. (20th Century Fox AU)
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Reviews (13)
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.
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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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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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Values (moral, personal, familial), likable anti-American critique (toothless, inoffensive), action with only one truly distinctive scene (the warehouse), and the strangled potential of wanting to play out at least one of the themes a little stronger. Or, it’s a perfectly Hollywood fluffy nothing that is held afloat only by Kinnaman's undeniable charisma. 3 ½.
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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.
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Gallery (95)
Photo © Sony Pictures
![Robocop - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/166/215/166215751_9f4b54.jpg)
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