Robocop (2014) movie review

Let’s add this to the list of remakes that didn’t need to happen.

To put it bluntly, if you’re looking at this film as a remake of the original Robocop, you’ll be disappointed. It is vastly inferior. But if you look at it as a movie on its own, it’s… still not too great. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s not good enough.

It has some of the same plot elements of the original. Some of them. Actually, 2 of them. The first one is that Alex Murphy gets turned into Robocop. The second one is that he takes down a business guy and stops his crime… stuff. That’s it. I don’t expect remakes to ever be the exact same as the original. I don’t want that. I want a remake of something to be familiar but new, with plenty of original ideas, but still keeping the same feel in respect to the original. The prime example that I can think of is Peter Jackson’s King Kong back in 2005. This, however…. no. Just… no.

The basic story is that a huge corporation run by some guy played by Michael Keaton has made these robots that “keep the peace” in the Middle East. But just like in the original film, the robots aren’t all that perfect, and end up killing some of the wrong people. All around the world, these robot patrols have been established. The only place robot-free is America. Michael Keaton gets the idea to put a man inside a machine, so the American people have something with a conscience to get behind and support. Everything about the plot was okay up until after that point.

Just to be clear, I will constantly compare the remake to the original in this review. I can’t review the remake without doing so. If you read my review of the 1987 classic, you’ll know that I freaking loved it. I was actually hoping for this to be good, too. I was all in support of a new take, I wanted a new take, and the concept of some of this new take was pretty cool. The execution, however, was not.

In the original, when Murphy gets turned into Robocop, he’s completely wiped of all his memories and his wife leaves him. Murphy goes through the process of remembering his past and regaining his humanity. In this one, he remembers who he is and tries to come to terms as to what he’s become. His wife was in favor of giving him the robot body. This plotline was actually interesting, and I think it could really have been cool.… but they ruined it when they later wiped his memory anyway. Why bother wasting 30 to 45 minutes setting up this story if the film was just going to brush it off? If falling back on the original’s story was always their intention, they should have made it to where Murphy never remembered his life before he became Robocop. No wasting time there.

You know it’s a bad thing when you think you could have written the movie better.

If you look at the film without comparison to the original, you’ll still notice a lot of the inconsistencies that weigh it down by themselves. For example, to Michael Keaton’s character, the Robocop was always a test subject to see if people would buy into the whole robotic security thing. He convinces Gary Oldman to build the actual suit. Alex Murphy’s wife signs the consent papers to give him the new body. She doesn’t know it’s all just a business move. She’s convinced it’s to save Alex’s life. After they’re done building the suit around what’s left of him, they simply drop him into a training program to see how he performs in combat. And Murphy goes along with it like it’s nothing! Shouldn’t he be more concerned about how his life is going to function with the suit than fighting with it?

It’s things like that which bring this movie down. The movie only gets good around the end of the 2nd act and onward. The main reason for that is because that’s when it finally resembles the original! I started to like it a little bit! But by that point, the damage was done.

There were things I liked about this movie, too. I don’t completely hate it. Firstly, the Robocop suit looks great! It looks familiar, but new and sleek and shiny. Most of the time, it surprisingly isn’t CGI! It’s a real costume! Robocop himself looks intimidating and pretty bad@$$. I also liked the ED-209’s. They’re always cool. The director would have to TRY to make ED-209’s bad. They also provide the only good action sequence of the whole movie. In general, all the effects were good. I’ve seen better, but I’ve seen a lot worse. Visually, it can be very reminiscent of the old one, but spiritually, it’s not there.

As for the acting, all I can say is that it’s functional. Nothing more, nothing less. The one I had the most problems with was the guy who played Murphy. He had way too much emotion on his face when he was supposed to be practically a zombie, and not enough emotion when he was supposed to.

In conclusion, this movie is average at best. Not a good remake, but not a terrible movie. It’s harmless to the Robocop franchise, and it won’t kill you if you ever checked it out.

FINAL RATING: 21 / 50

STORY: 2 / 5

ACTING: 3 / 5

CHARACTERS: 2 / 5

EFFECTS: 4 / 5

ACTION: 2 / 5

SOUNDTRACK: 3 / 5

TONE: 2 / 5

ENJOYABILITY: 2 / 5

REWATCH VALUE: 1 / 5

OWNING VALUE: 0 / 5