This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
RoboCop (15)
Directed by Jose Padilha
3 Stars
The way the US wages war has changed since Paul Verhoeven's brilliantly original Robocop first appeared a quarter of a century ago. Now, in this remake set in Detroit 2028, the eponymous hero fights with droids and drones.
The reason? The home front is becoming increasingly lawless and the multinational conglomerate OmniCorp, in the face of public scepticism, wants to substitute robots for human police.
Yet when Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) - loving husband, father and good cop -is badly injured on duty, an OmniCorp designer (Gary Oldman) sees the chance to create a part-man, part-robot police officer.
There's a problem, though, and it's the age-old conflict between profits and people. The OmniCorp's CEO (Michael Keaton), wanting a cheaper insentient creature, agrees with the plan while simultaneously seeking to sabotage it.
Thus the CGI battle commences, as villains seek to hamper the hybrid's human qualities, while he struggles to maintain them. He does have a wife (Abbie Cornish) and child, after all.
With Samuel L Jackson providing a running commentary like a corporate TV shock-jock, RoboCop eventually reveals the man beneath the Frankenstein exterior.
Though not a patch on the original RoboCop still retains the notion that once you hand over your brain and political control to capitalism, you're bound to be banjaxed.
In the tradition of John Carpenter, it provides a B-movie context to promote a simple notion - only a people united can defeat the bosses.
Jeff Sawtell
