CinamaWOW: A Lyrical Overview of Robocop

Robocop being a huge sci fi cult favourite since 1987. Now they bring you a newer sleeker and slightly different version. Here is a great review done By David Arkwright. Enjoy

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS/

The new iteration of Robocop adapts the concepts of the original in to a global scale. In some ways it is inherently more believable as a result than it’s namesake – there were obvious efforts made to bridge some of our current social/global struggles and their resulting forecast in to a dystopian future. Definitely more polished, it does lack some of the “cult-like” substance that drove the fan base of the original.

The obvious truth is that they scale back on how visceral or brutal the original was – this is, quite literally, the PG-13 version of Robocop; Which comes with it’s own subset of benefits and mishaps. The movie could stand to be at least 30 minutes longer to truly drive the narrative to where it felt like it wanted to go. That being said, it felt substantially more whole than other reboots such as the recent “Superman” release and in no way left the audience feeling unsatisfied. Without spoiling anything, the focus towards emotional turmoil and struggle was the right choice – the audience however, needed more time to let this truly develop.

I believe there was an opportunity to split the difference between a “Child Friendly” version and it’s original, over-done, brutal predecessor. Somewhere in the Dark Knight range: Tackling the emotional distress of our troubled hero from as honest a perspective as possible, while not compromising the opportunity for family’s to watch and enjoy.

(Most of)THE ACTORS/
Joel Kinnaman (Alex Murphy / Robocop) Gave a respectable performance, and while he was perhaps the smallest of the names on screen, he never left me feeling as though it was remarkably over acted. Some of the character choices could have been delivered with a little more conviction, but the point came through

Samuel L. Jackson (Pat Novak) was Sam Jackson. Loud, opinionated, sure of himself – not that there’s anything wrong with that. The character of Pat Novak is meant to be the embodiment of “Fox News” and he nailed it.

Michael Keaton (Raymond Sellars) Definitely portrays the evil of today’s corporate CEO, Love on the outside, money on the inside. This was a better choice than a simply “Sinister” corporate CEO. While his character was at times too “PG-13”, I found it more likely than his character of the original film. that being said, he lacked the conviction that suggests a brilliant business man – there was no cold calculation, it was perhaps just a hint too warm.

THE SCORE/

Visuals: 9/10
Acting: 7.5/10
Story: 7/10

OVERALL/

7.8 / 10

I would definitely recommend this as a movie to go see – visually it’s engaging (I would recommend IMAX if possible), the story isn’t perfect but with a reboot it’s often hard to compete with a loyal fan base. While it doesn’t make my top 10 movies of all time it was entertaining – isn’t that why we go to the movies, after all?