I loved the original Robocop. What wasn't to love? There were cyborgs, robots, and graphic, graphic violence. The bad guys were BAD guys. Between the gang violence and corporate corruption, the few good guys didn't have much of a chance in this futuristic Detroit. Even Detroit itself could be counted as a bad guy - seedy, dirty, filthy, worthless. It reeked. Everything in the original Robocop was intense, dialed to the max.
And that was always Verhoeven's trademark. I have a love / hate relationship with his movies. Yes, I loved Robocop. But do I need to see Officer Murphy shotgunned to chunks? No. Do I need to see Emil's skin melt away? No. Do I need to see ED-209 perforate that employee in the boardroom? Well... lol, kind of. It's making me giggle a little. Robocop's concept was great, but some of its direction was stupid. Same with Total Recall (give the concept credit there to Philip Dick). Same with Starship Troopers. I saw Showgirls at the theater and I think I left early. Verhoeven has this need to turn everything extreme, to the point he desensitizes his viewers and leaves them uncaring.
So, I was very happy when I heard that Robocop was coming to theaters again (not rebooted, right? remade?). I was hoping that whoever took the reins - Jose Padilha - would dial it back just a tad. I have this image of Spinal Tap turning their amps from 11 to maybe 9. I still want the action, I just don't need to be shocked. It had a great story! Let's spend a little more time on Murph's human struggles or on OCP's political corruption rather than melting someone's skin off?
Instead, this is what I got:
The story is only roughly the same. In this movie, OCP, the corporation, is making money hand-over-fist with its robotic security deployed worldwide. Here at home, however, the citizens of America won't allow the replacement of their police force with OCP's technology because robots lack conscience, judgment, heart... all those things that make us human. America doesn't trust them. So OCP establishes a pilot program in Robocop. It takes a cop who's just been obliterated by a car bomb, creates a cyborg with his left-overs, and puts him on the street to see if he can gain some of the public trust. Call it a compromise. And it works! He's on the street for just a few days and crime rates drop 80%! Wow! (That's really in the movie... I'm going to gloss over this.) His crime fighting is astonishingly efficient until he stumbles upon his own unsolved attempted murder, prompting him to break protocol and hunt down the filthiness hiding within his own police department. Barely related, he also finds that OCP might be a little corrupt, too.
And that's a HUGE problem with this movie. Everything that was bad was also intertwined in the original film. OCP was the end-all, be-all bad guy. It had dirty hands from the top of the food chain all the way down to the seediest of alley ways. Gang members even paid the OCP offices a visit, if you remember! Instead, this 2014 Robocop had the gang/police and OCP storylines play out distinctly. It was as if the writers and director finished filming the gang/police story and said, "Uh oh, we're way under time. Is there any way we can keep this film moving? Maybe add another bad guy?" So, as an afterthought, they decided to flesh out OCP into something more wretched later in the movie to keep us in our seats. Sure, OCP was contemptible, but corrupt? Like, point a gun at a kid and pull the trigger kind of corrupt? Not really. Not until the end, all of a sudden. How'd they go from selling robots to hostage takers? I guess I should gloss over that, too.
Another departure from the original movie was that Murphy's memory wasn't wiped, leaving him to struggle with his robo-humanity throughout the film. Most of this story element was fairly flat (if you're going to keep his wife and son in the movie, then play them up, damn it!), but it did mean more screen time with Gary Oldman, who played the doctor who "saved" Murph by creating the Robocop suit and talked Murphy through some of his emotional struggles. Anytime Oldman is onscreen, it's a treasure, and he brought the only emotional depth this film served. I won't deny that Michael Keaton did a fantastic job, as well (given the story's parameters), but Gary Oldman's supporting role was really the star of this film. Robocop himself didn't matter - Joel Kinnaman, Peter Weller... walk like a robot and you've got the role. I don't think Kinnaman showed much range, even when he was with his son, unfortunately.
A quick note about Keaton - I said he did a great job. He did. But his character was no Dick Jones. Dick Jones in the first Robocop was the ultimate weasel. One way or another, everything tied to him. If he had to throw a baby off a roof to get what he wanted, you wouldn't be surprised when he went through with it. Keaton's character, Raymond Sellars, was a weasel, but a baby killer? We're supposed to believe that at the end, apparently.
Finally, Detroit, city of sin. Honestly? Because if you took the gang scenes out of the movie, all you were left with was a couple alleyway drug deals. You didn't feel like Detroit was the sinkhole portrayed in the original Robocop. When they were panning shots through the police station, I swear I think every cop was at their desk. Maybe if they were out patrolling their city, they wouldn't need a cyborg helping out?
Other than these gripes, the action was fine for a PG-13 CGI movie. I asked for dialed down violence and, to my chagrin, I got it. There weren't many big sequences. Hell, half the time, Robocop was using a taser. It was nice to see ED-209 back on the big screen, but there was no thrill or tension to the fights. At least I liked Robocop's suit. That's something, right?
I didn't mind the movie in that I was mildly entertained for two hours, but I could have waited for the DVD. You know when you order a soda from a fast food restaurant and it has too much caramel and it's only mildly carbonated, but you're too lazy to take it back... so you drink it anyway? It's fine, but it's not the fizzy goodness you were hoping for. That was Robocop 2014.
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