Movie review: Cool action scenes, hammy political commentary in ‘Robocop’ reboot

The premise of Robocop (1987) was simple. What happens when you take a man and turn him into a machine? Robots were already being used in other countries, but the American public was wary of being policed by machines. The solution: What if it were a mix of man and machine?

Cop Alex Murphy gets brutally gunned down by street thugs and, supposedly to save him, he is turned into Robocop. Robocop is not only a better version of policemen because he has none of the weaknesses of a human, but he was the perfect marketing campaign for a new kind of police force.

It was a simple idea, but it brought forward a lot of questions. The most obvious is drawing the line of humanity. What makes us human? And how do we treat humans? Hybrids? There were questions of media and spin. There was a strong statement about corporations in the 80s and how these were taking control through manipulating the government. The flick could be viewed as a straightforward action movie, and the gratuitous violence and impactful action scenes fit the bill. But it also asked some very intelligent questions and it left out answers to that the audience had something to ponder amidst the smouldering wreckage of spent shell casings.

This new update keeps a lot of the basics of the premise. In fact, one of the cool things it does is showing us how some of those robots are operating in foreign theaters of war. It doesn’t need to tell us this is horrific. We’ve got an overused Samuel L. Jackson, who is the host of the Novak Element—a TV show that serves as the media commentary throughout the film. He tells us how great it is that American is bringing order to other countries with its robots. But then we are shown a grisly scene of resistance.

The problem is that the political message of the film seems overshadowed by making it cool. I suppose that’s the problem with this reboot, and so many other reboots like it. I’m not saying that the original Robocop was such an important political statement. But that film had something to say. In fact, it had a lot to say about a lot of things. This reboot attempts at political commentary, but that commentary is either too heavy-handed or the message is diluted.

One of the biggest problems is that this reboot does not trust its audience to be intelligent enough to decipher its simple images, so throughout the film we have characters who have to explain it to us. Whether it’s a symptom of bad writing or a disdain for the audience, I’m not sure. Either way, it’s clear that the movie assumes a limited capacity for intellectual engagement from the audience.

What the film does well is it updates the action and movement. Here’s the other tendency for updates and reboots: make it badass. I was a fan of the slow, kind of clunky old Robocop. But the new one moves great. There are some really sharp action sequences here. It’s very cool to watch the various robots move and the ferocity and speed at which this Robocop moves makes him unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

My problem was that it took them almost an hour to get him to back to Detroit, where the majority of narrative action was supposed to happen. There’s all this stuff that happens in between. And as if there weren’t enough struggle with this, there are a number of boardroom meetings and a number of overplayed emotional scenes where Robocop struggles with having a wife and kid. It seemed like there was so much happening attempting to narrate the themes that we were supposed to be worrying about.

And then in the film’s third act it surges forward without connecting the dots. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say that it throws a bunch of characters in the air and brings them together in predictable ways. Even though it’s predictable, it doesn’t move well in terms of story. I mean, really, you have to ask yourself as you watch, if we’re dealing with brilliant and incredibly intelligent characters, why are they acting and not thinking?

I think that if the original film didn’t exist, then this Robocop would be an okay action movie. But that’s the thing. Part of this film’s draw is the question of how it updates a very cool character. Without the existence of that old character, there isn’t much reason to remake this character. And while there is a lot of potential for social commentary, this film misses most of it because it is too ham-fisted in its attempts at political discourse. It makes the violence cool, which was something that the original film railed against. The original was ultraviolent to make a commentary about the kinds of violence we were watching and enjoying.

So while this new movie takes a lot of the elements of the original, it misses the spirit of raising questions through an action movie. All of the questions and story beats we find are too familiar and almost generic to contemporary action movies.

Despite the film’s having a slew of A-listers and great character actors, they can’t save a film that suffers from a lack of ideas and imagination. The updated action sequences show the best that the filmmakers’ imaginations have to offer. Beyond that, a lot of it can be edited or tuned out. — VC, GMA News


Robocop opened on Feb. 5 and is still showing in local cinemas.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own.