Should it be pointed out that both RoboCop (origin) movies have been directed by foreign film-makers? Their outsider perspectives, it could be argued, automatically provoke the inherent satire of the story (even if both ventures were written by astute and clued-up US screenwriters). RoboCop is a bit like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) wired up to Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971) and all those other badass dudes who make up the popular ‘maverick rozzer’ subgenre of action cinema that provoke our inner-fascist and eye-for-an-eye longing to see society’s transgressors not only neutralised, but atomised.
One of the most immediately striking aspects of RoboCop (2014) is the presentation of the cityscape (including a shot near the end which offers a bird’s eye view of Detroit that makes it look rather pointedly like a computer’s circuit board). Verhoeven went for a downbeat depiction of urban decay with a rapist and mugger for every street corner, but Padhila gives us a vision of a future American city and accompanying suburbia that is utterly anodyne.
What unites the 1987 classic and the more emotionally engaging remake is they both function as reflections of a free market, ruthlessly capitalist America and its fears, anxieties and status in the global scheme of things. RoboCop softens the ‘Nuke ‘Em!’ rhetoric for an occasionally wonky alignment of social, political and philosophical investigations. The film is still satirical but does not repeat the garish splatterstick-delivery that made Verhoeven’s movie so enjoyable and gory. Padhila’s sense of comedy is more sardonic, with associations and juxtapositions producing a wry chortle rather than belly laughs.
A lot of the narrative strands, however, become almost too much for Padhila’s movie to handle and, somewhat unfortunately, not everything functions well. There’s a Clarence Boddicker-like baddie (whose inclusion is dramatically negligible) and there’s a new variant on Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) in the form of Michael Keaton’s immoral CEO Raymond Sellars, whose lurch into outright villainy in the third act strikes a bum note. The best subplot has nothing to do with crime and punishment. Gary Oldman’s kindly scientist is beguiled by Omnicorp’s vast wealth, PR spin about helping society and the promise of research funding up the wazoo. The shot at personal redemption and helping a battered RoboMurphy in his most vulnerable hour is the best thing in a not entirely satisfactory finale.
The Omnicorp execs are battling the US Senate to allow them access to the biggest market in the whole wide world: their own country. The blunt argument put forth by TV host Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson), who works in the movie as a sort of one man Greek chorus and modelled on the likes of Fox News foghorns Bill O’Reilly (The O’Reilly Factor becomes The Novak Element) and Glenn Beck, is this: If the US government refuses to accept the revolutionary technology created by Omnicorp does that make them pro-crime? It’s a very emotive and perverse point and blinds the public to what is essentially the same old evergreen pursuit of the almighty dollar.
The film’s kids-friendly rating isn’t as terrible as imagined, either. Violent encounters are of course included, along with a fantastically icky lab scene where Murphy’s suit is removed to reveal the parts of his body that are still human (it’s not much). The action is all kinetic frenzy amidst a hail of high-tech artillery. Padhila cuts these sequences fast and furious and often in long or medium-framed compositions, thus reducing the need for gory close-ups and OTT spraying of the red stuff. The violence is mechanical and simply a means to an end and is not fetishised to make a satirical point.
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Silky stuff.