After reading many negative and/or disappointed reviews, I went to see ROBOCOP today. I wiped away my thoughts of the original, which I love, and went to it with an open mind. The approach is more cerebral and procedural regarding Murphys transition into cyborganism. I liked that aspect tremendously, as well as his familys adjustment to his new form. The adjustments and modifications needed to optimize his robotic condition at the expense of his humanity were fascinating to watch. The ever present corporate and conservative media slants werent overplayed, and fit into a realistic portrayal of things to come, or rather that are already here. I would expect and commend all of these elements in a smart low budget film that pondered the meaning of free will and existence. If this had been classic 70s Corman film, this would have also had lots of action and things blowing up. This movie, for the large budget, did not blow enough shit up. There were few action scenes, and such as they were not overly memorable. I am happy they took a clinical look at man becoming machine, but as an entertainment it was a bit lacking. The cast was very good. I will note Gary Oldman, Jackie Earle Haley and maybe Michael Keaton as the top performances. There was no fake ness or over the top shenanigans, so it stayed pretty consistent with the directors realistic bleeding edge technological vision. Verhoeven admittedly had to curtail the deepest human exploration aspects as he had action, sharp wit, satire and lots of lovely violence. But he managed to touch on that element in fine shorthand and with Basil Poledouris wonderful score. This remake/revision hit the deep human moments at the expense of most else, which is a shame. So ultimately I do not hate it, or dislike it. There is a lot to commend, yet a lot more that was missed.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 04:24:28 +0000
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