Robocop (2014) – Movie Review
RoboCop – PG-13
Release Date: Wed 12 Feb 2014
The 2014 remake of the 1987 film Robocop is a pale, brainless waste of time. No action sequence in this movie lingers in the mind after it ends. No clever idea, one-liner or character will leave the theater with you – it’s that forgettable. The closest thing we get to a likable character is Gary Oldman’s Dr. Dennet Norton, if only because the script gives him the closest thing to an arc. Michael Keaton’s one-note performance is true to the writing of a one-note character. You can almost feel Keaton trying to have a good time as the transparently evil and greedy leader of OmniCorp. Joel Kinnamon’s portrayal of the title character is also better than the script deserves. Where the original had dark comedy and interesting curveballs (the baked-in commercials that expanded the movie’s world, the sudden “board room malfunction” scene) this movie relies entirely on Samuel L. Jackson’s newscast to project the world, the comedy and the anything-but-subtle message that the media is lying to the public. The movies dares to end on one of these scenes as a final slap in the face, with Jackson losing his cool in the way we’ve come to expect from him. It’s tired, unnecessary and treats the viewer like a moron – and I would not buy that for a dollar.
Interestingly, the original Robocop was the result of years of development hell trying to bring the comic character of Judge Dredd to the screen. While Robocop (1987) is a much better movie that the eventual Sylvester Stallone movie Judge Dredd, the 2012 movie Dredd was a fantastic, stylized hard-R action movie that a lot of people missed. That’s a shame, because Dredd was surprisingly great and worth a rental if you’re in the mood for this type of movie.
