RoboCop remake takes more cerebral twist
REVIEW
RoboCop 1/2 (out of five) Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman Directed by: José Padilha Running time: 108 minutes Parental guidance: PG, coarse language, violence, not recommended for young children Playing at: South Edmonton, Galaxy, North Edmonton, Scotiabank, Windermere, Clareview, City Centre, Spruce Grove, Leduc, Grandin, Fort
There’s a scene in the new movie RoboCop in which well-meaning Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) tells how a cyborg with a human brain can fight with the speed and accuracy of a machine.
In combat, he explains, an artificial intelligence program overrides the brain’s decisions, but then provides instant feedback to the conscious part of the brain, making it think it’s in control.
“It’s the illusion of free will,” Norton concludes.
There’s another scene where RoboCop crashes his motorcycle through a plateglass window and takes out a huge, machine-gun wielding robot. It’s way cool.
And that’s RoboCop in a nutshell; a 21st-century reimagining of the human-machine interface that is sometimes much smarter and often just as stupid as the bombastic 1987 original. But it manages the balance well enough to entertain. It’s the illusion of cinematic genius.
Both films share the same premise. In the near future, Detroit is a crime-ravaged wasteland, and the police would like to use robots to uphold the law. American robo-peacekeepers are already patrolling such foreign hot spots as Tehran.
But domestic use has been banned by a robo-phobic senator (Zach Grenier). Omnicorp CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) figures he can skirt opposition by creating a cop who’s half man, half machine.
Enter upstanding Detroit police officer Alex Murphy, played by Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman of TV’s The Killing. An attempt on his life has left him badly burned and almost dead. By the time Norton’s team is done with him, his human parts comprise head, trachea, lungs and right hand.
The rest of him is machine — and, chillingly, the property of Omnicorp. That fact is driven home when he tries to escape the company’s facility in China and Norton presses a button to shut him down before he can run off through a rice paddy.
In the original RoboCop, Murphy loses most of his memories in the cybernetic conversion. Here, he retains a distinct sense of self, bolstered by regular if awkward visits with his wife (Abbie Cornish) and young son (John Paul Ruttan). But he spends most of his time in the company of Norton.
Joshua Zetumer’s script owes much to the original screenplay, with sly winks to such catchphrases as “I’d buy that for a dollar!”
In place of news anchors discussing the plot, new RoboCop gives us Samuel L. Jackson, having a blast as a tough-on-crime TV commentator, railing against liberal politicians and asking his audience: “Has the Senate become pro-crime?”
The cast is consistently better than the material. In addition to Keaton and Oldman, hashing out philosophical debates, we get Jackie Earle Haley as a cynical weapons expert; Jennifer Ehle as a slippery corporate type; and Jay Baruchel as a spineless lackey, a role at which he excels.
RoboCop is the Englishlanguage debut of Brazil’s José Padilha. He also made the excellent 2007 film Elite Squad and its 2010 sequel.
At one point Kinnaman’s Omnicorp handlers manipulate his dopamine levels to make him less emotional and, hence, easier to control. But you can’t take the man out of the cop, as we learn when Murphy decides to investigate his own attempted murder.
The RoboCop faceplate drops over his eyes only when he’s on duty, so Kinnaman can act with more than just his chin. Two eyes and five fingers are all he needs to convey the emotions of a man trying to keep his grip on his humanity in an increasingly mechanized world. Some themes never get old.