A RoboCop reboot was an interesting idea considering that enthusiasm for the franchise has waned in recent years. Compared to the release of Golden Eye and Casino Royale, 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In the future much of the United States armed forces have been replaced by robots. The movie opens with a disturbing scene in a "pacified" Tehran where the drones used to keep the population in check go awry. Pundit / corporate shill Pat Novak (played by Samuel L Jackson, who is having a lot of fun in the role) reveals 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 Raymond Sellers, the CEO of OmniCorp (Michael Keaton), the manufacturers of the robots, wants to get the law repealed and talks a robotic prosthesis researcher named Doctor Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) into helping him.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) gets blown to smithereens while following the trail of criminal Antoine Vallon. 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 in gut-wrenching detail. When Dr. Norton awakens him, Murphy is disturbed by how little of his body is left; 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 he 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. Many scenes focus on Murphy's family, friends, and other associates reacting to his devastated body, an interesting exploration which is nonetheless awkward to watch. 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, subtle focus on marketing and focus-groups and how these dominate current boardroom culture. When RoboCop begins trying to solve his own murder, the head marketer (Jay Baruchel) can only lament that he didn't come up with such a clever branding angle himself.

​

But the movie has two big flaws. The first one is that the villains of the movie are not quite up to scratch. The Mattox character (played by Jacky Earle Haley) seems to be a 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 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 the main character all that much. 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's 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 moral conflict is the heart of the movie. Also, there are times when the Pat Novak portions of the script aim at being clever while only managing 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 unassailable 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 (although the second film has its defenders). But like a lot of big Hollywood movies these days there were missed opportunities in the story departments.