RoboCop

The effort for interesting psychology and the ambiguity of both the main and secondary characters is worth praise, and so, thanks God, is the absence of a dull, straightforward plot. What was popular in the 1980s would definitely not be as popular now (or only in a new guise). Surprisingly, the film fails the most in the action, which is both scarce and not great. From a 100 million action movie, I would expect a greater impact. At the same time, it is evident that they lacked skill for a grander and, above all, more detailed production, clearly visible, for example, in the similarly expensive but much better executed Minority Report. (16/02/2014)

It isn’t usual for an expensive blockbuster (and especially a remake of an action movie of the eighties) to put its money on ambiguous characters, a moral dilemma about the limits of “humanness" or a criticism of America as the self-proclaimed “global policemen who should clear up their own mess at home"; all of this of course (unfortunately) toned down to large-budget proportions and diluted by the mandatory (and superfluous) SFX action ingredient, but all in all the course they chose was still entertaining, I tell you. (07/02/2014)

The big surprise is the powerful screenplay which squeezes all it can from the topic and the story even has some overlap of relevance. It takes a slightly different route to the original RoboCop and that certainly does no harm. Routine action is a little restrained, only letting go during the final battle with the chickens. Keaton and Oldman steal the movie, dominating the screen in their scenes together. Alex Murphy has also gone through a certain change. Although Kinnaman doesn’t equal Weller’s qualities, he puts on a really good performance. The ace up the sleeve is director José Padilha who, despite an exhausting struggle with the studio, was able to push a lot of ideas into the project (the studio rejected nine out of every ten ideas) and details that push RoboCop upward. Next time, give it freer rein and it’ll be bombastic. (06/02/2014)

Somewhere half-way. I don’t glorify Verhoeven’s classic, so I went into Padilha’s remake without prejudice, and yet it was unable to win me over in any significant way. As an action flick, the action scenes in Robocop aren’t exciting, and as a satire, it’s not sharp enough, even though it has some promising hints. Overall it’s unremarkably bland. (04/05/2014)

Values (moral, personal, familial), likable anti-American critique (toothless, inoffensive), action with only one truly distinctive scene (the warehouse), and the strangled potential of wanting to play out at least one of the themes a little stronger. Or, it’s a perfectly Hollywood fluffy nothing that is held afloat only by Kinnaman's undeniable charisma. 3 ½. (09/12/2014)