The original "RoboCop" [1987] is a fantastic masterpiece directed by one of my all-time favorite directors Paul Verhoeven. It was über-violent, had state-of-the-art one-liners and hilariously funny satirical newsflashes like only Verhoeven can make them (see "Starship Troopers" [1997] for more great examples.) Most of all it had real actors and equally memorable good and bad guys.
I'd buy that for a dollar!
It also had a good story about rich greedy bastards in a gigantic company called Omni Consumer Products controlling everything including the police and military. Then OCP creates RoboCop - half robot half man and then you have an awesome movie. The two sequels sadly weren't directed by Verhoeven and they are weak family entertainment completely lacking the edge and punch of the original and without any of the good old ultra violence.
See, I got this problem. Cops don't like me. So I don't like cops. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na...
Skip to 2014 and director José Padilha boldly (or rather stupidly) has created a remake of the original. I already knew from the trailers that it would suck and I would hate it, but it is easier to hate a movie for real if you actually watch it first, and so I did. It is impossible for me to wipe the awesomeness of the original from my mind, so I can't just pretend this remake is a completely different movie altogether. I think the new RoboCop remake is a pile of shit.
Well, give the man a hand!
The story is partly told through embarrassingly pathetic newsflashes presented by Samuel L. Jackson in a lousy performance as a TV show host. None of these TV show elements contain any humor or sarcasm as found in the original. They are in fact mostly stupid and boring. In between this there is a lot of CGI and somehow even when they for some stupid reason let RoboCop (Joel Kinnaman) keep one human hand they still manage to lose most of his personality (if he ever had one) through most of the movie. He is just another fucking robot dressed up in an Iron Man suit. He doesn't even do anything memorable for most of the movie except shoot a lot of CGI robots which is hardly very entertaining, but obviously perfect if you want to make sure that even children are allowed to watch your lousy bloodless remake in the cinemas.
The characters are all very anonymous or vague and you really don't give a fuck about most of them, be it Alex Murphy's family, Alex(RoboCop) himself, the good guys or the bad guys. They are just there. Even the ED-209 combat robots aren't really cool here. The ED-209 that killed off Mr. Kinney during the demonstration in the original movie left a much greater impact even for the non-perfect special effects back then in 1987. In the new RoboCop it looks like a very cheap version of Legolas killing Oliphants in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" [2003] - only this time the Oliphants are ED-209s and Legolas is RoboCop in an Iron Man suit.
They have even reused the original RoboCop music theme and that somehow made me sick having to hear this great theme on top of this shit heap. Much like another Alex felt in "A Clockwork Orange" [1971] when they played the beautiful music of the great Ludwig Van, while showing Alex gruesome images.
I wouldn't buy that for a dollar!
"RoboCop" [2014] may not be as bad as "RoboCop 3" [1993], but then again - it somehow is.
2014:
- Rating: 2/6
- Director: José Padilha
- Runtime: 1h58
1987:
- Rating: 6/6
- Director: Paul Verhoeven
- Runtime: 1h42
Rating: 
Movie Title: RoboCop
Director: José Padilha
This Release: 2014
Movie Genre: Action
RunTime: 118
Actor: Joel Kinnaman
Movie Format: Cinema
Content Type: Movie Review
Language: 
Updated: 2014-02-06 14:47
Created: 2014-02-06 08:38
