Film Review - Robocop (2014)

A remake of the 1987 cult classic, this version of Robocop again sees Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) turned into the Robocop program following a fatal accident but there is a big difference between man and machine.

I can't say in any honesty that I have been looking forward to this film mainly because I am a huge fan of the original film and would rank it as a favorite of mine but alas I said to myself "I'll go and see it and try to keep an open mind about it."

Needless to say, this did not meet my very low expectations as the 2014 model is nothing short of bland, boring and heartless, allow me now to explain those points in more detail:

- It is bland in the sense that there is no edge or no wit to this version, Paul Verhoeven's original film had a sense of wit in terms of the satire regarding the theme of corporate privatization and insight into American culture which Verhoeven was able to capture very well being a Dutch filmmaker and no edge because the violence presented here may as well have come from the Call of Duty video game series as it all happens so quickly there is no sense of impact and there is a near complete lack of blood in the film save for the climax but hey that PG-13 rating won't be earned by having those things in this won't it.

No it won't because heaven forfend a film and a big studio film at that dare try to break out of the new Hayes Code which is the PG-13 rating, what a fucking joke.

- This new film also has no heart to it because you do not care at all about Kinnaman in the title role as he just does the same robotic monotone the entire time whereas Peter Weller made you care about the character as he began to rediscover his humanity whereas here there isn't the sense of that and the villain here is a complete nobody which was NEVER the case in the original film.

- This now leads me into my final point which is that I just began to get bored watching it, Abbie Cornish, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton are good actors but they do nothing but spout meaningless dialogue and you start to think "What are these people doing in this film?", the ED-209 which was a fearsome sight in the original is just reduced to another digital toy for the filmmakers to throw in for a big action sequence and the music score is just the usual Hans Zimmer knock off we've been getting now since the mid 90s and boy does it feel like toilet paper when compared to the late Basil Poledouris's wonderful score that is also great to listen to in its own right.

And so to wrap this up, the 2014 model of Robocop is defective and you should avoid it at all costs, rent the 1987 original film instead and boy do I wish the new restored print of that film had been playing in cinemas instead of this remake, 1 out of 5.