After Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is critically injured during a car explosion (bomb planted by one of the main villains Antoine Vallon) in front of his home, CEO of OmniCorp Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) and his team of scientists turn him into Robocop — a cyborg police officer they want to sell as the future of law enforcement in America. What Sellars and Omni Corp don’t realise is that even though they have almost turned him into a robot, Murphy still has emotions. (Ladies, you can tell your men that if Robocop can show emotions, then they better start acting as well.)
I didn’t yawn throughout the movie at all nor did I touch my phone to check my messages and my mails. Kinnaman, who has impressed in The Killing, has done well in this movie, playing first an emotional cop then an emotional robot, then an emotionless robot and eventually an emotional robot again. Along with him they have used many TV actors such as Aimee Garcia (who played sergeant Batista’s sister in Dexter), Zach Grenier (the super annoying David Lee in The Good Wife) and of course Michael Keaton. The action sequences are good and raw (the director is Jose Padilha, so you can draw comparisons with Elite Squad).
But even after all these good things, there are some flaws. Thanks to Ironman, Batman, The Avengers and Spider-Man, we have been spoiled in this genre — Robocop doesn’t score well if you compare.
Robocop’s vengeance against Antoine Vallon, the gangster who had planted the car bomb that changed Alex Murphy’s life, should have been highlighted more. Meanwhile, Robocop’s personal life crisis with his wife and kid dragged on forever and still didn’t even remotely wet my eyes. And even the debate on the pros and cons of handing law enforcement over to robots didn’t become big enough to drive the movie forward.
An above average attempt and decent try by the director.
