FILM REVIEW RoboCop’ 3 Second Review Jose Padilhas smarter-than-expected remake of the 1987 action classic holds a mirror to the political present. FULL REVIEW If anyone was under the impression that Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 “RoboCop” was a vision of the future, Jose Padilha’s pumped-up, cleaned-up update makes it clear that this sci-fi concept merely holds a mirror to the political present. Shifting the prime target of its satire from corporate greed to post-9/11 jingoism, this well-cast, smarter-than-expected remake repairs much of the damage done to the iron-fisted lawman’s reputation by meat-headed sequels and spinoffs; it’s a less playful enterprise than the original, but meets the era’s darker demands for action reboots with machine-tooled efficiency and a hint of soul. The new model should capitalize on a dearth of equivalent genre fare in theaters, without automatically activating a franchise relaunch. The once-mooted prospect of a Darren Aronofsky-directed “RoboCop” was certainly tantalizing, but producers Eric Newman and Marc Abraham were wise to secure Brazilian adrenaline-monger Padilha (best known for his hard-edged “Elite Squad” thrillers) to take the reins here on his first English-language feature. Just as the bleakly cynical liberalism of the original “RoboCop” was ideally suited to Verhoeven’s European perspective, so the new film benefits from a foreign helmer’s distance as it sends up American right-wing security concerns with a mostly straight face. Stylistically, however, Padilha and Verhoeven are very different brands of outsider: While the Dutchman aimed to beat Hollywood at its own flashy game, the Brazilian brings a rough, street-level energy to the proceedings, sometimes to the point of affectation. Set in an eminently recognizable 2028, “RoboCop” begins, as did the first film, with a current-affairs broadcast. Rather than the chirpily delivered evening-news bulletin of the original, however, we’re now tuned into “The Novak Element,” a Fox News-style outlet for the heated political commentary of Pat Novak — a Rush Limbaugh-like figure played by Samuel L. Jackson, and an unreliable Greek chorus of sorts for the film. Blessed with a toupee straight from the “Hunger Games” school of future hairstyling, Novak is a vocal ally of OmniCorp, a U.S. robotics development corporation whose peacekeeping machines are — in the first of several key deviations from the original script — already in use abroad, though not in “robophobic” America, where politicians fiercely debate the ethics of non-human policing. Joshua Zetumer’s script cleverly reshapes the psychological quest of the original film to fit a 21st-century American culture arguably more preoccupied with emotional intelligence than it was in the late Reagan era: Where the first film had RoboCop discovering his humanity after being conceived and introduced as a robot, his more complex goal here is to regain the human qualities he was initially given, and by which he has been advertised to the public, politicians and his family alike. There’s an increased satirical focus here on the corporations’ positioning of RoboCop as both product (“He transforms!” a marketer enthuses, slyly referencing a certain other metallic action series) and patriot. The cast in general performs well above the minimum demands of the material. Kinnaman lacks the lithe wryness Peter Weller brought to the 1987 film, but has his own cool authority, while Keaton (perhaps having less fun with the role than the initially cast Hugh Laurie might have done) is a reserved, genuinely off-putting villain, leaving the maniacal business to a ripe Jackie Earle Haley as OmniCorp’s chief militarist. Best in show, handily, is Oldman, whose tender ruefulness as Norton does a good deal of the film’s emotional legwork. On the design front, the updates to the familiar RoboCop iconography are respectful but sleekly streamlined. Gone are the endearingly clunky robot effects of the original film, as all the machinery here — including, of course, that all-important suit, here given a slight Daft Punk accent — exudes contempo architectural glamour. Uniformly solid visual-effects work is most arresting in the lab scenes that show what remains of Murphy without his armor — a reveal that leads one to wonder, at least fleetingly, how a David Cronenberg “RoboCop” remake might play out.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Feb 2014 22:22:26 +0000