 Tagline: Your move Crime has a new enemy in this "sleek, stylish and smart" (Silas Lesnick, ComingSoon.net) action-thriller starring Joel Kinnaman, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton! In the year 2028, greedy conglomerate OmniCorp uses robotic technology to transform critically injured police officer Alex Murphy (Kinnaman) into the ultimate crime fighter. He's part man, part machine...he's RoboCop! Back on the streets, Murphy is hard-wired for law enforcement, but the mind and memories of the human inside long to take over...and the results could be catastrophic. Storyline: In RoboCop, the year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Overseas, their drones have been used by the military for years - and it's meant billions for OmniCorp's bottom line. Now OmniCorp wants to bring their controversial technology to the home front, and they see a golden opportunity to do it. When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) - a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit - is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp sees their chance for a part-man, part-robot police officer. OmniCorp envisions a RoboCop in every city and even more billions for their shareholders, but they never counted on one thing: there is still a man inside the machine pursuing justice. Written by Sony Pictures Entertainment Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben on May 30, 2014 -- A collective groan greeted the announcement that MGM was remaking RoboCop, followed by howls of protest at the news that the remake would be rated PG-13. Director Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original famously pushed the limits on gore and goo, even before restoration of the trims required to obtain an R rating. (Current audiences usually see Verhoeven's bloodier director's cut, which is the version most commonly available on video.) How could one possibly do RoboCop without a copious amount of spatter? (Let's not debate whether Irvin Kershner had already done so in RoboCop 2.) During production, reports were leaked of running battles between studio executives and Brazilian director José Padilha (Elite Squad: The Enemy Within), making his debut English-language feature, with the director pushing for the tougher rating and the studio insisting on a PG-13 to maximize box office, especially given the film's burgeoning cost. Padilha may have lost the ratings battle, but he won the war of ideas. A devoted fan of Verhoeven's RoboCop, it was Padilha who first suggest the remake to MGM when they were pitching him other projects. Working with up-and-coming screenwriter Joshua Zetumer (whose script was reportedly doctored by several uncredited hands), Padilha followed the path blazed by RoboCop's original writers, Edward Neumaier and Michael Miner, who used the story of an involuntary cyborg to comment obliquely on issues of their time. Though Padilha's film borrows key story points, and his film is studded with affectionate references to the 1987 original, several critical differences radically transform the story. I discuss some of them after the first screenshot; so readers who haven't seen the new RoboCop and want to experience it without any knowledge of its plot should skip that section entirely. Verhoeven's RoboCop arose from an era in which America was preoccupied with a seemingly unstoppable tide of urban crime. It was also the era of Wall Street and Gordon Gekko, when corporate takeovers, spinoffs and consolidations were transforming the service and employment landscape so rapidly that Verhoeven's depiction of police privatization by OmniConsumer Products (or " OCP") had a timely satiric sting. As the solution to a threatened police strike, OCP proposed robotic automation, and the RoboCop program was a last-minute stopgap when the original robot "cop", the ED-209, malfunctioned. Only after OCP perfected what it called "urban pacification" by automating the police department did it plan to market these products to the military. In the new film, however, priorities are reversed, as foreign policy drives domestic priorities. Omnicorp, which turns out to be a subsidiary of OCP, supplies robots to the military. The ED-209 functions perfectly, and, together with the smaller, lighter EM-208, a human-shaped robot, it has entirely replaced Army assault troops. Padilha's RoboCop opens with a news crew covering these automated forces keeping the peace on the streets of Tehran, assisted by a fleet of airborne drones. When a group of "insurgents" attacks the robots, they are quickly blown to smithereens. The head of Omnicorp, Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), is frustrated, because he cannot sell his products for domestic law enforcement, which is the biggest potential market in the world. Robots are barred from that arena by the federal Dreyfus Act, named after its sponsor Senator Hubert Dreyfus (Zach Grenier). Sellars and his advisers, general counsel Liz Kline (Jennifer Ehle) and marketing chief Tom Pope (Jay Baruchel), have twisted and finagled every possible angle to evade the Dreyfus Act, without success. Then Sellars has a brainstorm: Let's put a man inside a machine. It's good PR, and it's a loophole in the law. Thus, instead of being an orphan project suddenly elevated to top priority in a corporate power grab, as in Verhoeven's film, the new RoboCop is an integral element of Omnicorp's marketing strategy from its inception. The science becomes the responsibility of Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), who has been quietly researching methods to restore amputees' lost functions with artificial limbs that respond to neural commands. Sellars asks Norton to take his project to the extreme by creating a full-fledged cyborg. After a long screening process, they choose Detroit police detective Alex Murphy as their subject (Joel Kinnaman, The Killing). Like the Alex Murphy so memorably played by Peter Weller, Kinnaman's Murphy has a wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish), and a son, David (John Paul Ruttan). He also has a loyal partner named Lewis, only this time around the partner is a man (Michael K. Williams, The Wire). Once again, Murphy is the victim of a powerful gangster—here named Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow)—with major influence and heavy weaponry, but the events have nothing to do with Omnicorp. It's pure coincidence that Murphy is grievously injured at just the moment when Sellars and Dr. Norton are looking for a RoboCop test subject. And unlike Weller's Murphy, Kinnaman's doesn't die or lose his memory. He remains very much alive and himself, as his tearful wife signs the consent forms for Dr. Norton to do whatever it takes to save him. Clara remains a part of the story, first stoically, then desperately determined to bring her husband home to his family. The expanded role of the Murphy family in Padilha's film underlines perhaps its most significant innovation. In Verhoeven's RoboCop, the title character solved his own murder but never regained his memory; his triumph at the end was to recover a semblance of humanity by adopting his former name. But Kinnaman's RoboCop never stops being Alex Murphy. From the moment he wakes up in the elaborate motorized prosthesis that is now his body, Murphy struggles to come to terms with his drastically changed circumstances. That struggle proves to be inconvenient for Omnicorp, because it interferes with the purpose for which RoboCop was created. His human face makes him presentable to the public, but it also makes him less predictable. As immediately spotted by the company's robot wrangler, Rick Mattox (the excellent Jackie Early Haley), the cyborg's organic component— in other words, the human element—is a step backward for the company's highly efficient product line. Mattox refuses to call Murphy "RoboCop"; he prefers "Tin Man". Verhoeven's film turned on a corporate battle between the ruthless OCP executive Dick Jones, who wanted RoboCop destroyed so that Jones's own product line could take his place, and upstart VP Bob Morton, who had snuck the RoboCop program past Jones. In Padilha's film, by contrast, the battle becomes one between Omnicorp and RoboCop himself, as the company discovers that putting a man inside a machine makes the machine uncontrollable. Ironically, Dr. Norton finds himself deceiving and "dumbing down" the man inside, through neurological programming and biochemical manipulation, until the Alex Murphy who first woke up with a prosthetic body has been almost entirely erased. His wife, Clara, no longer sees her husband when she looks in his eyes. He appears, moves and sounds very much like Peter Weller's RoboCop: a soulless cyborg who only mimics humanity. But he still looks human enough to sway public opinion and get the Dreyfus Act repealed—at which point Omnicorp no longer needs him, and Sellars decides to end the program. As in the 1987 film, TV broadcasts provide a running commentary, but television has changed in the intervening decades. Instead of the jokey local news broadcasts with their satirical commercials, we get a tendentious cable news show, The Novak Element, hosted by an immaculately coiffed advocate of robotics, Pat Novak. In an ingenious casting choice, Novak is played by Samuel L. Jackson, who gives Novak much the same intimidating tone he used for his Bible-quoting Jules in Pulp Fiction. Novak may be better dressed than Jules and use flashy graphics instead of a pistol, but he's still a hired gun whose job is to advance the interests of Omnicorp. Novak's segments reflects today's diversified media world, where channels can thrive on a segmented audience of like-minded viewers and hectoring know-it-alls can be found at all points along the political spectrum. Novak is a terrific orator, but pay attention to what he actually says, and it makes no sense. When he celebrates the incorruptibility of robots because, unlike cops, they can't be bribed or bought, it's all true—and it's also irrelevant. What about the people who own and direct the robots? What about Novak himself? Paul Verhoeven's 1987 RoboCop remains an unsurpassable classic, partly because it came first and partly because Verhoeven's cheerfully offensive visuals have a unique panache that no one else could hope to equal. But Padilha's 2014 version offers its own pleasures, if one approaches it with an open mind and doesn't expect it to replicate the Verhoeven experience. If the original is what you want, it's readily available. This is a different movie, and the Blu-ray presentation is excellent. Highly recommended. [CSW] -2.6- Much better than expected, but nowhere close to the original. The violence in this one was muted, which gave the original a knockout punch. I felt nothing at all for the characters in this film. The bad guys were weak...unlike the original. Why would you even want to make a PG-13 RoboCop?. Got it for very low $$$ -- Once is enough -- Keep? Cast Notes: Joel Kinnaman (Alex Murphy / RoboCop), Gary Oldman (Dr. Dennett Norton), Michael Keaton (Raymond Sellars), Abbie Cornish (Clara Murphy), Jackie Earle Haley (Rick Mattox), Michael K. Williams (Jack Lewis), Jennifer Ehle (Liz Kline), Jay Baruchel (Tom Pope), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Chief Karen Dean), Samuel L. Jackson (Pat Novak), Aimee Garcia (Jae Kim), Douglas Urbanski (Mayor Durant), John Paul Ruttan (David Murphy), Patrick Garrow (Antoine Vallon), K.C. Collins (Andre Daniels). IMDb Rating (08/12/13): 7.1/10 from 164,539 users IMDb Rating (02/28/03): 7.5/10 from 8,375 users
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