Ahhh Valentine’s Day, the perfect holiday to release a movie about a robo suited killing machine out for vengeance. It just makes me feel all warm inside.
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“Robocop” is a remake of the 1987 film about a cop in Detroit who finds himself in need of a robotic body to continue to live and serve on the force. Though his new strength and abilities seemingly make him a better cop, the mystery and motives of the company that made the suit end up wreaking havoc on his life. So first thing, many fans of the original might be wondering, how does it compare? Well, I have no idea… ok that’s not true, but in complete honesty I actually haven’t seen the first one all the way through so I can’t do a true comparison but from my understanding it’s a toned down, fairly consistent, take off on the first, with some nice winks to the audience despite maintaining it’s own DNA. But here’s the real question, is it actually any good?
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Well, better than I expected, that’s for sure. First off, the movie has a really great feel to it. It’s obvious that director Jose Padhila has a real feel for creating tone and texture in a movie. His vision of this future is both slick and compellingly cool. He’s helped along by an amazing cast including, Gary Oldman, Samuel L Jackson, Jackie Earl Haley, and Joel Kinnaman, who you may know from AMC’s “The Killing”. He plays the cop at the center of it all with a genuine pathos and conflict that I just wasn’t expecting. I’m also absolutely thrilled to see Michael Keaton back on the big screen. His manic reading of the head of Omnicorp, the company behind the robotics was some of the most fun and interesting acting going on in the film.
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In fact, so interesting that I’m not sure if I actually liked it.. At moments it sucked me in and I felt like he was killing it, and then other moments it felt forced and gimmicky. That’s right, Michael Keaton was both the best and worst thing about the movie. Either way though it added an interesting element to the proceedings. There are a few other things that brought the movie down as well. For one there are some really squeamish moments especially for a PG-13 film. I mean I don’t get queasy at the drop of the hat, but I also don’t turn on the surgery channel for entertainment. That gross out factor might be a bit much for some. Also the Middle of the movie has a tendency to drag. I think the backstory and character development is needed, but some of those scenes could have been edited much more economically. One of my real annoyances though was that the universe lacked consistency to its rules. I mean I don’t want to give anything away but there are several moments where the movie is like, this isn’t possible, and then somehow it is, and there is no attempt to explain why whatsoever, leaving us wondering what the point was in the first place.
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At the end of the day, Robocop is a decent but flawed attempt to recreate a universe many loved from the 80s. The acting is fun to watch even if it’s inconsistent, but a list of annoyances including a disregard for intelligent plotting bring it down to a admittedly generous B-
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? You can click here to see reviews for Valentine’s Day flicks “About Last Night”, “Endless Love”, or “Winter’s Tale”. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. What is the “the best movie ever set in Detroit”. Since it is The Motor City, it’s only appropriate that mine is named after a car. Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and don’t forget to subscribe!