A RoboCop reboot was an interesting idea considering that enthusiasm for the franchise has waned in recent years despite being something of a pop-culture touchstone. Compared to how the release of Golden Eye and Casino Royale made everyone perk up, the announcement of a new RoboCop was met with suspicion. The original RoboCop was released in the late 80's and went for an extremely gritty, ultraviolent feel, filled with a great deal of cynicism and post-industrial angst with touches of social commentary. It managed to strike a spark and the character became an icon of his era. No doubt success was too much for it and the franchise then felt the need to throw itself off a building with two dreadful sequels (one partially penned by Frank Miller) and an even worse live-action TV series. During the production there was talk of delays and re-shoots, the kind of rumours that could kill a movie or make "industry insiders" declare it a bomb before anyone ever saw it. Despite the supposed 'early warning signs' RoboCop holds up.

In the future much of the United States armed forces have been replaced by robots with only minimal human support troops available. The movie opens with a disturbing scene in a 'pacified' Teheran where the drones are used to keep the population in check goes awry. We find out through a pundit / corporate shill named Pat Novak (played by Samuel L Jackson, who is having a lot of fun in the role) that every country in the world is using similar methods to police their streets, with the exception of the United States of America. Novak alternates between being a parody of a pundit and a wry Greek chorus (or Greek Soloist, I guess) for the movie. We eventually learn that there is a law called the Dreyfus Act which bars unmanned drones from being used for law-enforcement within the United States. Raymond Sellers, the CEO of OmniCorp (Michael Keaton), the manufacturers of the robots, want to get the law repealed and talks a robotic prosthesis researcher named Doctor Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) into helping him. Meanwhile a reckless cop named Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) starts to investigate a criminal Antoine Vallon who eventually plants a bomb that blows the poor man to smithereens. Omni chooses Murphy as a test-subject and begins to convert him into a cyborg after manipulating his wife into signing a consent form.

In the original movie Murphy's brain was salvaged and his humanity subdued from the get-go, and much of his character arc is built around him piecing his past back together. Though those were the original movie's more emotional scenes the new movie opts to make Murphy self-aware from the start and the filmmakers explore this gut-wrenching detail. When awoken Murphy is shown by Norton how much of his body left and is treated to an unsettling sight; these scenes prove to be the most effective scenes in the film. The original movie's science was rather slight but here the writers did their research well-enough to pass it off as pretty reasonable. Murphy's reaction is one of shock and tries to run away but is eventually talked into willingly complying by Norton. But success comes difficult and the rather moral Doctor Norton finds himself compromising more and more into suppressing Murphy's character 'for the greater good'.

Overall this is a very good movie, though fans of the original may miss the grittier landscapes and brutal violence that made the original distinct. For a city being crushed under poverty and crime Detroit is looking good (partly because it was filmed in Toronto. The movie is not wall-to-wall action and it spends the first hour building the story effectively. An interesting angle is that most people's reaction to Murphy up close, his friends, co-workers and even family is that they are subtly creeped by his appearance, leading to many awkward scenes. With the exception of the final action scene (which relied too much on CGI) the action scenes are well filmed and exciting. There is a lot of sly if slight focus on marketing, focus-groups and how it dominates current boardroom culture. When RoboCop tries to catch Vallon for trying to murder him (something the police don't want him to investigate) the head marketer (Jay Baruchel) quips "Solving his own murder? Wish I thought of that!"

But the movie has two big flaws. The first one is that the villains of the movie is not quite up to scratch. The Mattox character (played by Jacky Earle Haley) seems to be villain just because he had to be and there is no real in-depth reason for his dislike of Murphy. Vallon similarly is not as fearsome or psychotic as the criminal mastermind from the original. Even when (minor spoiler) one of the sleazy Omni executives turns against RoboCop it feels like the script is simply going into autopilot. The second flaw is that the movie does not feature that much on the main character. Though he's the focus during the latter-half of the movie we see more of the boardroom scheming and test-lab fidgeting than we do of our hero. It is possible that to keep the run-time reasonable the movie had to cut out more of Murphy dramatic scenes (to the point where it is difficult for me to decide whether Kinnaman does a good or adequate job). By contrast Doctor Norton comes across as the best-developed character and his conflicting morals is the heart of the movie. Also, there are times when the Pat Novak portions of the script thinks its being clever while its just being sarcastic, despite being more barbed and acidic than the original movie's media satire.

I don't consider the original to be the best movie ever or an unassaible all-time classic like Casablanca so I don't think there is anything particularly wrong in rebooting the movie, given that most of its sequels and spin-offs are ignored by a large portion of its fan-base (the second film has its defenders). But like a lot of big Hollywood movies these days there were missed opportunities in the story departments.