Around high school my dad showed me and my brothers the original Robocop movie, and we thought it was the best bad movie we ever saw. Now we have the reboot which my dad and I just saw.
Plot: A powerful company called OmniCorp is is the center or robot technology for the military. But when a act in the U.S. government keeps them from selling their robots for use in civilian law enforcement, they decide to put a human in a machine. So when a good cop named Alex Murphy is critically injured by a car bomb, they put him in a cyborg suit and display him as a robotic police officer for Detroit.
As a reboot from a popular campy movie from the 80's...generally I liked it. Yes, it is by no means a masterpiece. But what they did for a reboot was surprisingly good. Or at least, very admirable. The original film (at least as far as I can remember it) was a bad, but fun to watch kind of popcorn, "shoot em' up" kind of film that was very over the top with it's action and gore, and had a very simple story. But here, it's less about the violence and more about the story and some of the main characters. Roughly similar to what The Wolverine is compared to Wolverine Origins, this movie focuses less on the big, fun mindless action, and more on the main character and what he's going though. In this case, this mostly focuses on his experience becoming RoboCop and trying to be in control over his cyborg body. And that's what made the film so surprisingly enjoyable. I was expecting a movie that had some new elements that are lightly put in, but mostly just mindless violence. But instead, it acted more three dimensional about the concept of RoboCop and who he is as a person all from a different point of view, with some decent, fun action on the side. Joel Kinnaman plays RoboCop and while he wasn't amazing, he did all around give an acceptable performance. We also have Gary Oldman as Dr. Norton and he gives a very likable performance and really helps out in making the story feel more thought out. The biggest problem for me personally however, was how they didn't really give us much with RoboCop's family. True, they were a part of the story unlike the family in the original film, and they weren't completely bland per say. But they still were not as well developed as the rest of the cast, to the point that neither of them- especially the son, really had anything close to an identity. As great as it was to go more into RoboCop as a person who is going through all of this stuff, their biggest flaw to that aspect was that they didn't give us focus on the family in a way that strengthens what they were doing.
And that's my review for Robocop. If you are looking for a mindless action movie, you're probably not going to enjoy this film. But all in all, RoboCop was a likable movie that was more heavy on the story and the characters then on the action. It's not done great, but to me, it's something to really admire the makers of the film for making this film both as an action film and as a reboot for a mere concept like RoboCop.
No comments:
Post a Comment