RoboCop Review

RoboCop is a new action film starring Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish and Samuel L. Jackson. RoboCop is directed by Jose Padilha who is a Brazillian director of which this is the first of his films I have seen. RoboCop is a great entertainment action film and the type of movie that you go to for some great action, some great sound effects and some great explosions of which this reboot has it all.

I’m a very big fan of the original RoboCop films and remember going to the video shop when I was much younger and renting them all out on VHS and watching them during my school holidays. I watched them because of the action and because RoboCop was awesome. The same reason was why I used to watch all of the original Terminator films, because they are great strong action films. So of course I would go and watch RoboCop at the cinema’s to see what this new one was like. Now I wasn’t expecting that much from the movie at all, considering how downhill the Terminator movies have went, I just didn’t have high expectations. I also thought that the M rating compared to the R rating would mean I just wouldn’t get the same experience. But you know what, I was pleasantly surprised with this movie.

RoboCop is a reboot of the popular RoboCop franchise of the late 80’s and early 90’s. The reboot aims to take a more modern interpretation to the story, it is not a remake so don’t expect the same film. Although RoboCop is similar in many ways to the original films, sort of like the recent Amazing Spider-Man reboot, it’s the same sort of thing but not really. People who go in expecting the same thing and sit there comparing the two RoboCop franchises or expect every single thing to be the same are not going to have fun at all. You have to give this film a chance on its own as a separate thing entirely to the original films.

RoboCop does a really great job of establishing a situation of context for the character of RoboCop to be created. What essentially is happening in this film is that Omnicorp which is a big corporation that sells robots as advanced weapons in every country but America, wants to enter the American market. But the idea of introducing a robot into America does not have a high amount of public opinion in Omnicorp’s favour and there is a large amount of political opposition to the idea of robots enforcing the law. Main reason being that robots are cold and don’t share any emotional decision making so Omnicorp executives get the idea to blend the two and create a RoboCop. Samuel L. Jackson plays the role of Pat Novak a sort of propaganda spreading Omnicorp voice and who is greatly placed to establish a voice for the objectives Omnicorp is going for. I loved watching his monologues in this movie, Sameul L. Jackson always has such good presence in a film and all his speeches were enjoyable to watch.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdQwW_IMhGI[/youtube]

Now there is a lot of things that go on in the film but I’m trying to avoid the spoilers but basically I thought there was a good balance in this RoboCop story of building the RoboCop character and the balance between maneuvering between the various characters and roles. Alex Murphy as played by Joel Kinnaman as RoboCop was portrayed both as human dealing with his family and wife and as a protector and police officer and later as RoboCop very well.

Michael Keaton who many will know as Batman in the 1989 films also did very well in this movie as the cold corporate figure from Omnicorp and main villain as well in this RoboCop film. Michael Keaton also worked very well with Gary Oldman who many would know as Commissioner Gordon also from the Batman films although during different times. There are a few interesting moments of the two together on screen talking about crime and things that are fun to watch for a moment. I also thought that Abbie Cornish worked well and had good chemistry with Joel Kinnaman in the husband and wife scenes but wasn’t in the movie so much to really make a full impact.

The directing of the RoboCop film by Jose Padilha surprised me as it was not really what I was expecting. I felt that in after viewing the movie that there was a great level of detail and attention made not only to creation of the character and the movements of limbs like the legs and technology used in the film which is based on current technologies. But I thought there was also a good level of detail and attention paid to the RoboCop franchise in general. While the tone is completely different in these movies (think the change between Burton’s Batman and Nolan’s Batman) this RoboCop is more serious, the tone is tense and there is little to no jokes made in this version of RoboCop. I liked that the film had a serious more tense feel to it to its characters rather than joking around during the action scenes.

Speaking of the action scenes, I think there is a good value here for the general viewers who love to just watch things get shot at and fired at. It’s a good popcorn movie with a lot of action sequences, gun fire, motorcycle driving, arrest making, robot walking fun. I could ask for more action but I feel that there was a good balance here between action sequences and story telling. Sound effects were also good and had a lot of robot like sounding things while the world of 2028 looked futuristic enough but not so much that it was too unbelievable to think that’s where things could be heading.

Overall this RoboCop film was very entertaining and a fun viewing experience. RoboCop has some great action scenes and a great cast of characters. There is a good balance between the action and the storytelling and as a movie that was made to entertain, I certainly was very entertained. I have scored this movie based on being something fun and being an M rated film over something R rated makes RoboCop a film I think much more people can handle and enjoy. I’m looking forward to the sequel which I hope that it gets as so far for the year as action films go, the creators of RoboCop put in a good effort with this one and it was certainly good cinema entertainment.