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RoboCop
(José Padilha, 2014)
There's a big problem with the new RoboCop movie, and that's how un-robotic our eponymous hero feels. Alex Murphy doesn't make much of a leap from human to robot. There's a very good scene in which we see just how much of Murphy is left after the attempt on his life, and that he is indeed going to wear a new body, not a new suit. Yet for all this display of chroma key magic not once did I consider him robotic. He makes jokes, he freaks out, he loves his family. The closest he comes to acting like a robot is when the Omnicorp lab rats tinker with the dopamine levels in his nervous system, and even then we don't get a robot, just a guy that's doped up and a little too focused on his work.
It's the future, again. Americans are still "pacifying" the Middle East, so not much of a stretch. Remember how the original movie opened up with Omnicorp pitching war droids at the military? Here they've already sold a whole bunch of ED-209s and other enforcement humanoids. Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson) hosts The Novak Element, a less funny but equally effective TV show that plays intermitently throughout the movie, never quite taking part of the plot but commenting on it. We see all hell break loose in Tehran during one his shows, which prompts the Omnicorp execs into rethinking robo-enforcement in dire need of a human element. As CEO Sellars (Michael Keaton) puts it, "We're gonna put a man inside a machine".
[Img_Inline width="350" height="200" Caption="" align="left"]http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/robocop-580x266.jpg[/Img_Inline]
Read those words over. Understand what I meant when I said RoboCop isn't much of a robot to begin with? He's "a man inside a machine" - or an actor inside a suit, for that matter. The actor is Joel Kinnaman in the role of Murphy. Anne Lewis, his original partner, gets the "Jimmy Olsen treatment" and is re-imagined as Jack Lewis (Michael K. Williams), though we don't get a whole lot of chemistry between them. They're after one Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow), a weapon's dealer with ties to the dirtier element of the Detroit Police Department. Vallon's a poor man's Clarence Boddiker, a blank slate of a character filled in by an actor with no presence. He plants a bomb in Murphy's car and sends him all the way to Omnicorp's leading laboratory... in China.
[Img_Inline width="350" height="200" Caption="" align="right"]http://www.slantmagazine.com/assets/house/film/robocop2014.jpg[/Img_Inline]
Thus starteth the filmeth. Murphy gets re-purposed by the good Dr. Norton (Gary Oldman) and we spend a lot of time at the Omnicorp labs as Murphy plays laser tag and the scientists tweak this and that to perfect their RoboCop. Murphy also Skypes with his wife Clara (Abbie Cornish). Yes, the missus and the kid actually join in for the ride. But you'd be wrong to assume that Murphy's newfound identity as a slightly aloof cyborg would be a source of conflict between him, his wife and their son.
Like I said, he's a guy in a suit, and acts like one, at least until the lab coats tinker with the dopamine in his body during the second act. The wife and kid serve purely as hostage fodder, if the plot need be.
No, the real conflict is between the Murphy family and Omnicorp, which does everything in its power to keep them separate, lest Mrs. Murphy distract their cash cow from his duties. There's also a subplot involving the US Senate and the approval or dismissal of an act that would allow Omnicorp to go national (they police the world but not their own country, you see).
[Img_Inline width="350" height="200" Caption="" align="left"]https://cdn.amctheatres.com/Media/Default/images/Robocop%20header.jpg[/Img_Inline]
So we have Murphy's own "murder case", Murphy's freedom or lack thereof from the Omnicorp labs, the corruption of the police department, Omnicorp's political speculating, the Senate debacle and the well-being of the Murphy family all tightly bundled into a series of intertwining subplots that run all the way together until the very end.
Keaton is the best thing in the film, perfectly cast as a greedy bastard free of moral qualms. Jackson is good too as a kind of malign Greek chorus, though he doesn't bring much to the plot beyond underlining the obvious. Oldman is in his good guy mode so you know all there is to know about him from Nolan's Batman trilogy - inherently well-meaning, ultimately weak and ineffective without his Dark Knight.
Speaking of Dark Knight - Rob Bottin's suit still looks better than the new slick, dark version. It actually shows up during the movie here and there, so I don't even have to speak from my nostalgic gut to know (not that I would have one over RoboCop). We also get variations on some of the original movie's hit catch-phrases like "I'd buy that for a dollar" and "Thank you for your cooperation".
Overall it's a well written, well plotted movie that juggles a whole lot more plot than the original and knows how to seamlessly tie it all together. It's not very funny or satirical. I could lament how safe it plays on violence and satire, how un-daring it feels compared to the original. But are not the best movies a product that is unique to their time? Isn't the first RoboCop movie so good because it captures a certain spirit and keeps it alive for others to experience, regardless of time and space? In the year 2014 the world is a politically correct, socially aware, globally indifferent thing that will compromise and cater to wider audiences while trying to offend no one. Let this movie be a testament to that. Don't fake it - let the people know this is how it went.
RoboCop
(José Padilha, 2014)
There's a big problem with the new RoboCop movie, and that's how un-robotic our eponymous hero feels. Alex Murphy doesn't make much of a leap from human to robot. There's a very good scene in which we see just how much of Murphy is left after the attempt on his life, and that he is indeed going to wear a new body, not a new suit. Yet for all this display of chroma key magic not once did I consider him robotic. He makes jokes, he freaks out, he loves his family. The closest he comes to acting like a robot is when the Omnicorp lab rats tinker with the dopamine levels in his nervous system, and even then we don't get a robot, just a guy that's doped up and a little too focused on his work.
It's the future, again. Americans are still "pacifying" the Middle East, so not much of a stretch. Remember how the original movie opened up with Omnicorp pitching war droids at the military? Here they've already sold a whole bunch of ED-209s and other enforcement humanoids. Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson) hosts The Novak Element, a less funny but equally effective TV show that plays intermitently throughout the movie, never quite taking part of the plot but commenting on it. We see all hell break loose in Tehran during one his shows, which prompts the Omnicorp execs into rethinking robo-enforcement in dire need of a human element. As CEO Sellars (Michael Keaton) puts it, "We're gonna put a man inside a machine".
[Img_Inline width="350" height="200" Caption="" align="left"]http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/robocop-580x266.jpg[/Img_Inline]
Read those words over. Understand what I meant when I said RoboCop isn't much of a robot to begin with? He's "a man inside a machine" - or an actor inside a suit, for that matter. The actor is Joel Kinnaman in the role of Murphy. Anne Lewis, his original partner, gets the "Jimmy Olsen treatment" and is re-imagined as Jack Lewis (Michael K. Williams), though we don't get a whole lot of chemistry between them. They're after one Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow), a weapon's dealer with ties to the dirtier element of the Detroit Police Department. Vallon's a poor man's Clarence Boddiker, a blank slate of a character filled in by an actor with no presence. He plants a bomb in Murphy's car and sends him all the way to Omnicorp's leading laboratory... in China.
[Img_Inline width="350" height="200" Caption="" align="right"]http://www.slantmagazine.com/assets/house/film/robocop2014.jpg[/Img_Inline]
Thus starteth the filmeth. Murphy gets re-purposed by the good Dr. Norton (Gary Oldman) and we spend a lot of time at the Omnicorp labs as Murphy plays laser tag and the scientists tweak this and that to perfect their RoboCop. Murphy also Skypes with his wife Clara (Abbie Cornish). Yes, the missus and the kid actually join in for the ride. But you'd be wrong to assume that Murphy's newfound identity as a slightly aloof cyborg would be a source of conflict between him, his wife and their son.
Like I said, he's a guy in a suit, and acts like one, at least until the lab coats tinker with the dopamine in his body during the second act. The wife and kid serve purely as hostage fodder, if the plot need be.
No, the real conflict is between the Murphy family and Omnicorp, which does everything in its power to keep them separate, lest Mrs. Murphy distract their cash cow from his duties. There's also a subplot involving the US Senate and the approval or dismissal of an act that would allow Omnicorp to go national (they police the world but not their own country, you see).
[Img_Inline width="350" height="200" Caption="" align="left"]https://cdn.amctheatres.com/Media/Default/images/Robocop%20header.jpg[/Img_Inline]
So we have Murphy's own "murder case", Murphy's freedom or lack thereof from the Omnicorp labs, the corruption of the police department, Omnicorp's political speculating, the Senate debacle and the well-being of the Murphy family all tightly bundled into a series of intertwining subplots that run all the way together until the very end.
Keaton is the best thing in the film, perfectly cast as a greedy bastard free of moral qualms. Jackson is good too as a kind of malign Greek chorus, though he doesn't bring much to the plot beyond underlining the obvious. Oldman is in his good guy mode so you know all there is to know about him from Nolan's Batman trilogy - inherently well-meaning, ultimately weak and ineffective without his Dark Knight.
Speaking of Dark Knight - Rob Bottin's suit still looks better than the new slick, dark version. It actually shows up during the movie here and there, so I don't even have to speak from my nostalgic gut to know (not that I would have one over RoboCop). We also get variations on some of the original movie's hit catch-phrases like "I'd buy that for a dollar" and "Thank you for your cooperation".
Overall it's a well written, well plotted movie that juggles a whole lot more plot than the original and knows how to seamlessly tie it all together. It's not very funny or satirical. I could lament how safe it plays on violence and satire, how un-daring it feels compared to the original. But are not the best movies a product that is unique to their time? Isn't the first RoboCop movie so good because it captures a certain spirit and keeps it alive for others to experience, regardless of time and space? In the year 2014 the world is a politically correct, socially aware, globally indifferent thing that will compromise and cater to wider audiences while trying to offend no one. Let this movie be a testament to that. Don't fake it - let the people know this is how it went.
