System reboot

There’s a slew of 1980s remakes getting thrown at us lately. Endless Love and About Last Night both got redos just in time for Valentine’s Day.

On that very same day, a day of candy and heart-shaped cards, MGM released an updated date movie of a very different sort—Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 ultraviolent satiric masterpiece, RoboCop.

The idea to reboot RoboCop has been kicking around for years. The last installment of the previous franchise, the remarkably awful RoboCop 3, came out more than 20 years ago. The reins were eventually given to Brazilian director José Padilha (Elite Squad), who received a mandate to produce a PG-13 RoboCop (as opposed to the hard-R original) so that more money could be made. After a tumultuous production, we have the result.

And that result? Not that bad … not bad at all.

Padilha and writer Joshua Zetumer wisely go for something very different this time out. While the update is as subversive, and perhaps satirical when it comes to its presentation of the media, it has a little more heart and emotion than the nasty original.

Now, normally I’d cry foul at this sort of thing, because I loved my RoboCop bloody, but the strong cast and a visually sound presentation make for a movie that is, at the least, worth watching even if it pales in comparison to Verhoeven’s insane incarnation.

Joel Kinnaman steps into the role of Alex Murphy, a Detroit cop in the year 2028 who gets himself blown up after causing too much trouble for a criminal kingpin. Murphy, with the permission of his wife (Abbie Cornish), has his life saved by being placed into an armored endoskeleton with the purpose of making him a law-enforcement superhero.

In the original, after Murphy (well played by Peter Weller) is brought back to life, he starts his crusade against crime not really knowing who he is, with his memories suppressed. He eventually figures out his identity and solves his own murder.

The new film drastically diverts from the original, having its Murphy freak out upon waking up as a robot, fully cognizant of who he is. It’s only when his emotional stability comes into question that his doctor (Gary Oldman) decides to mess with his brain and shoot him full of dopamine, turning him into a robot zombie.

I heard about this twist in advance, and I didn’t like the sound of it. Alas, the idea of a man knowing full well that he has been turned into a cyborg is a relatively scintillating cinematic topic, and it’s handled well. Murphy’s wife and kid play a bigger part in this story, and that turns out to be fine.

Michael Keaton represents the evil corporation that creates RoboCop. His Raymond Sellars is evil in a more understated way than Ronny Cox’s Dick Jones from the ’87 film, but he’s just as sinister. And Jackie Earle Haley gets one of his most funny roles ever as a militaristic policeman, while Samuel L. Jackson gets to scream as a sensationalistic talk-show host.

The movie also contains some clever winks to the source material, including an army of ED-209s—the cumbersome war machine that fell down the stairs squealing in the original—and a nod to the design of the first RoboCop suit before Keaton’s character switches it to a sleek black model.

In the end, the remake rewrites the original in a way that won’t piss off its legions of fans. One hundred years from now, if anybody is watching RoboCop movies, I imagine the Verhoeven film will still be the one most in favor. The new one amounts to a decent enough curio, but it won’t be a classic.