In the year 2028, Detroit finds itself overrun with crime. The police do their best but they cannot protect the streets by themselves. When Alex Murphy, a loving husband and father, is nearly killed in the line of duty, a multinational conglomerate, OmniCorp, sees their chance to build a part-man, part-machine police officer in an effort to build public trust for larger financial gains. Jose Padilha's Robocop remake isn't a bad film by any means, just a wholly unnecessary one. Following Hollywood's current trend of remaking hard R films "more accessible", this version of Robocop is a castrated version of its ultra-violent predecessor. While its PG-13 rating doesn't necessarily kill the film, it makes this new Robocop feel very uninteresting, lacking any real stakes or consequences. The bigger problem is that this new version has nothing interesting to say, having no real social commentary. This is a film completely satisfied with making a shallow, uninteresting action film but probably what's so frustrating is its missed opportunities. The film dances around an interesting commentary on society's freedoms and media manipulation but it never goes anywhere interesting, simply scratching the surface and moving on to the next action sequence. While I must admit I enjoyed watching Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson chew up scenery, it's not nearly enough to make this film worth recommending. Jose Padilha's Robocop does do enough from a story perspective to separate itself from the original film but unfortunately it has nothing interesting to say.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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