Robocop [DVD] [2014]

Why anyone thought to attempt this remake is beyond me. It is a toothless pastiche of the original lacking any of the biting satire, gritty landscape, or ultra-violence that Robocop is notorious for.Instead we are forced to swallow a sanctimonious morality tale of 'Big Companies are Bad', but for all that the corporate money-men do is this film they don't so much prove themselves as evil, but inept, much like the makers of this filmIt's only redeeming quality is the bid to portray the human aspect to Murphy through his family relationships, but even this falls flat as if afraid or simply incapable of addressing complex emotion.If you've read this far I appreciate your time, so by way of thanks and in an effort to save you more of it, I just have to say that I don't normally write these reviews unless a film has moved me in some way - and this 'robocop' has moved me to anger for the waste of mine.

As a fan of the original movies and character since the first film, I really wanted to like this one and hoped this reboot would be good, and while it has some good moments, some aspects let it down for me.Firstlyn there was too much exposition and not enough action, and visual choices that just dampened it for me. The characters actually looked pretty good silver coloured, then ruined it when they painted him black, making it look like he was wearing a plastic and rubber suit, and whats with leaving him with a human hand?! It just looked stupid. In combat he's supposed to be a tank, they even thought of a visor that comes down to protect his face during combat, but left him with a vulnerable human hand contrasting against his black armour, it just doesn't make any sense, and as i say just looked stupid.

First off, I haven't watched the original RoboCop or any of the sequels. This is the very first exposure I've had to the franchise. Well, aside from small clips and a video game from a long long time ago. What I went in expecting was, well... an injured cop turned robotic cop solving crimes. The movie failed to deliver on this crucial element, the very title of the movie, for far too much of the runtime.Without a single story spoiler, a lot of this movie ends up just being boring, time consuming padding. Plot points are set up earlier in the movie, and then they pay off with very mediocre results that stick around for about as long as they were set up. The sections of the movie which feel like they go on forever could've been condensed into montages or time lapses with nothing of value being lost. The characters and settings which the movie should've spent far more time establishing and building on got left in the dust for generic and predictable story beats. What you're left with is a movie which doesn't have any emotional weight or interesting characters, and I found myself not caring at all who lived or died during the finale. If the intention was to make you feel more like an emotionless robot after watching it, they nailed it.One aspect which I really hated about this movie, and many like it, are the action scenes. Why. Do. The. Cameras. Keep. Cutting. So. Much. Why is absolutely everything a CGI mess with no weight or impact? A prime example of this comes later in the movie in the form of the ED-209 equivalents - they're there and gone in less than five minutes and used merely to have a big computer animated fight scene. You'd be lucky if you even saw them from how much the camera swaps and shifts like you're stuck in a teleporting washing machine.The only aspect which sort of worked for me was Samuel L Jackson's portrayal of Pat Novak, a character used in sections to stitch the narrative together in a news slash talk show parody. However, I felt like even these sections were deflated, like the substance just wasn't there to back his acting up. He was the closest I came to liking a character from the movie despite his minor role, and I would've liked to see him either hammed up or made as a bigger parody of who and what he was representing for a more lasting effect.I went in expecting an action movie which gave me a figure of justice to root for, and what I got out of it was virtually nothing but thoughts on how I'd execute the movie better, and a desire to go back and watch the original to see what I'd missed out on. A part of how I judge a movie overall these days is how many times I look at the clock during the course of the runtime. I found myself checking how long was left and what time it was far too many times to keep count this time. If I'm doing this multiple times during a movie, the movie has failed to captivate or interest me. I'd suggest giving this soulless remake/reboot a miss and check out the classic action movie it attempts to reboot instead.

I'd like just to humbly give the reviewers who gave this film 1 star a little advice. Stop comparing it to an original which couldn't be bettered - reviewers do that to a lot of films and it's a shame because you miss some good performances by switching your mind off to an inferior, but still worthwhile, film. In this case Joel Kinnaman gave a fine performance as Robocop, not as good as Peter Weller in the original, but not bad at all. He flitted between emotionless and emotional with ease and gave a personality to the character he was playing in an efficient and enjoyable performance. Amie Cornish (who's skin is like cashmere where as mine is like cotton! ), and a very young and talented, John Paul Ratton gave sympathetic and solid performances as his family. However, they along with Michael K Williams (fantastic screen presence), as his partner, just didn't have enough screen time. The main problem I had with this film was that there was just too much fiddling with Robocop's knobs (if you pardon the expression) and not enough engaging with the enemy. Also I absolutely hated Samuel Lee Jackson in this - partly his poor performance (unusual for him) but also because the whole TV show thing was just silly - it could easily have been cut out and the whole film would have been better without it. I didn't like Michael Keaton's performance in it either, I personally , think he is overrated as an actor and he didn't fit well here. Gary Oldman in comparison gave a great performance, competent as always, and who doesn't like seeing him in a Sci Fi - he raised the whole thing just by being in it. Overall not a patch on the original but a very enjoyable watch all the same.

Even exemplary performances by Gary Oldman and Samuel L. Jackson could not save this disappointing remake.The plot has so many "why would they do that?" holes in it, your suspension of disbelief is heavily challenged. I watched to the end to see if there might be a twist that might fill all the holes but it played out entirely predictably.Did I mention that Michael Keaton was such a plank you could hear the wood warp?