Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Hayley, and John Paul Ruttan
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 117 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2014
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This American science fiction film is a remake of the original 1987 movie, “RoboCop”. It stars a new actor in the title role (Joel Kinnaman) and is directed by a different director (Jose Padilha) than the person who directed the original film (Paul Verhoeven). None of major players in the original cast appears in the movie. The year is 2028 in Detroit, USA, and corruption in the city (and elsewhere) is rife.
Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is a police detective who is injured critically in a carbomb explosion set off by crooked cops, working with the assent of Detroit’s Chief of Police. Drone technology to help combat crime has been a profit-making business for years, and now is the chance to introduce a new cyborg technology. Building “human” cyborgs has possible advantages. It helps to absolve a company of responsibility if something goes wrong, and it is an alternative to Drone technology that has its own problems. As a result, Alex is transformed into RoboCop. With the permission of his wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish), he is created by Dr Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), who is Chief Scientist at the Omni Foundation, a multinational centre for robot technology. RoboCop is seen by those at the Foundation as a chance to introduce a new product into the US market that will gain the public’s trust and help guarantee their safety.
As a cyborg, Alex has enhanced strength and access to instant computer information in his brain. He is part-human and part-robot, and seen to be the future of American justice. But Alex keeps on having subconscious memories of his former life. His emotions interfere with his efficiency, and there is sometimes a need to control them.
The Chief of the Omni Foundation is Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), and he uses Alex to ensure success of a critical piece of relevant legislation that is in the interests of OmniCorp, and which is up for repeal by the US Senate. In the course of demonstrating cyborg efficiency and reliability, Alex’s program is altered to control his consciousness and expression of emotions – to the extent that Alex is no longer able to respond to his wife and son (John Paul Ruttan). When RoboCop threatens the future of OmniCorp by being “too human” and engaging in too much decision-making, Sellars sends his henchman (Jackie Earle Hayley) to destroy Alex, who now doesn’t suit his economic purposes. The film uses a television presenter, Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson), who champions mechanised crime control, to give a running “showpiece” commentary on all that is happening.
In the final confrontation, Sellers arms the OmniCorp building with Drones and takes Clara and David as hostages. Alex uses his human nature to overcome his programming and summons up the will to confront Sellars, whom he kills. In conclusion, the US President vetoes the repealed legislation, and we see a rebuilt Alex waiting to see his wife and son.
The film is full of violence, explosions, and is action-packed. The original movie was about greed, vice and corruption, but this film stretches its original concerns to analyse much more the interaction between human nature and technology. It seems interesting to ask why Sony Pictures has backed a remake of an original film in a popular series. The answer lies in the nature of the remake. This movie makes good use of modern military technology, and shows clever awareness of public reaction to it. Vietnam, Iran and Afghanistan are part of its background, and it is a version that is closer to reality than the films before it. As result, it lies nearer to emerging Science.
The film also taps philosophical dilemmas that always make for good science fiction: When and how should human emotions, with their scope for error, be allowed to determine where technology needs to go? How does technology impact on our freewill and sense of freedom? How much does a robot “know what it feels like to be human”? These are weighty (albeit, unresolved) questions in the movie, which the film flicks across to the viewer throughout its reel time.
This is a science fiction movie that raises interesting issues, and it aims to be contemporary in its appeal. It might upset some of the fans of the 1987 version, especially with its choice of RoboCop’s costume design and its greater focus on weighty matters, but it represents an entertaining foray into thinking about the world’s scientific future.
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