Robocop (2014)

It’s hard not to feel the sting of nostalgia when attending the sanitized multiplexes of today. With fantasy quickly seeping out of their stern façade to befit a dubious form of deceitful realism, and all of our cherished memories now being grinded into a gritty paste meant for uneventful digestion, us fans of cinematic excess are left to lumber like melancholy dinosaurs, watching helpless as vampiric corporations are relentlessly producing millions of standardized clones with the stolen DNA from old-time favorites, shamelessly producing wealth from the past efforts of truly inventive artisans. Given this story state of affairs, I was actually surprised to see how long it took for Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 hit Robocop to be given the “gritty reboot” treatment. Being a huge fan of the film, and its scathing critique of American consumer culture, I was happy to see it elude the jagged teeth of the Hollywoodian meat grinder. That is until the inevitable happened, and we were suddenly given a shimmering black new Robocop, glossed over endlessly to better draw attention away from its empty shell.

Released nearly two decades after the original, amidst growing political turmoil abroad and increasing concern with unethical technological upheaval, this new version could’ve easily provided a timely update on the original material, itself a cynical portrait of Reaganomics and the American arms race of the 1980s. And while Robocop 2014 is founded on a very intriguing premise involving military excess in the Middle East and the disturbing political power of American multinationals, the film is eventually dogged down by a lazy, self-indulgent screenplay that slowly transforms a potentially transcendent narrative into a neutered dud on the path to a contrived, action film finish (set on a helipad of all places).

MGM certainly tried hard to recapture many of the major tenets from the original hit, recycling its two most famous lines and memorable score with unabashed shame, but they ultimately lacked Verhoven’s cohesive vision, his biting humor, colorful direction, and every scrap of movie magic necessary to create a truly involving project from such an outlandish premise. The result is a schizoid entity made of two contradicting parts: a metaphysical treatise about free will in the face of rampant automatization and a simplistic revenge thriller with dull shades of sci-fi. With each important issue growing increasingly irrelevant and redundant until the uninspired final act, the spectator can only sulk as the whole ship sinks into the dark ocean of Hollywoodian eugenics, with talented thespians Gary Oldman and Jackie Earle Haley trying vainly to salvage it from oblivion.

Despite some inspired turns, Gary Oldman and Jackie
Earle Haley can't save the film on their own.

The film starts in similar fashion as the original by using a crude parody of right-wing American media in order both to lay out the basic tenets of the story in didactic fashion and to depict the dystopian society home to the story. However this time, none of Verhoeven’s trademark cheese is to be found, only a slick, impersonal stage unto which a stiff Samuel L. Jackson is hoisted as the unwavering flag-bearer of the American right. Using a copious amount of massive interactive screens, which he seamlessly handles to better help illustrate his self-serving drivel, Jackson hams it up in the glaring spotlight of what he calls “The Novak Report”, rambling on about the need to bring home Omnicorp’s brand of military androids to better help safeguard American streets from rampant crime. He then goes on to air an on-location report in occupied Iran to better demonstrate what he feels is the efficiency of combat machines in promoting peace and safety abroad. 

The film subsequently attains a dramatic high by depicting the reality of machine-controlled military hegemony in the Middle East. Battalions of humanoid androids and heavily armed bipedal tanks (recycled ED-209 from the original film) are seen roaming the streets of Tehran, scanning terrorized civilians lined up in front of their homes in search of elusive terrorists. When such terrorists do manifest, we can only watch and cry as they strap bombs around their chest and hopelessly rush forward in a desperate attempt to take out the soulless killers in their midst and draw international attention to their plight. When a disenfranchised teen joins the onslaught, throwing his explosive body unto the cold shell of a roving tank, I felt a bitter tear roll down my face, the very same tear that I shed over and over when learning about dead Middle Eastern kids. The realistic nature of the opening scene and the shocking inhumanity of right-wing American pundits that it depicts are just that powerful, and a chilling reminder of just how horrible the world has now become under the paternalistic embrace of the United States. Unfortunately, the film never reaches such dramatic highs again, its razor-sharp edge being slowly dulled by the need to forward the story from one stand-alone scene to the next.

Momentarily exiting the realm of Pat Novak, only to be confronted with a world filled with even more interactive screens, we soon learn the reasons for the absence of robotic law enforcement in the US. Apparently, some high-minded senator has passed a bill prohibiting the recourse to robots as upholders of human law. His rationale is simple: a machine will see nothing objectionable with the slaughter of children, pulling the trigger while intellectually unable to grasp the value of human life. Obviously, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in promoting life-preserving laws that apply exclusively to US citizens, but that’s keeping in line with almost all of the actual American foreign policies. And while these laws originally prevent robotics mogul Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) from landing lucrative security contracts with American concerns, it also spurs his Machiavellian brain, which quickly hatches of a foolproof plan to bypass national legislation. That plan is Robocop, a man/machine hybrid with a sufficient sensibility to dispel all ethical concerns with automated law enforcement. 

Thanks to some lazy developments, the film's
breathtaking overture soon fades out of mind.

Chosen as the guinea pig for Sellars' revolutionary moneymaking gimmick is tough cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), whose recent brush with an influential mobster has left him the crippled victim of a brutal car bombing. Hoisting the slim remainders of his body into a cold robotic shell is empathic Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), who bickers with fellow engineer Rick Mattox (Jackie Earle Haley) about the efficiency of organics in the process of robotics engineering. When the actual proficiency of Robocop is disproven by Mattox in a series of strenuous simulations, Norton is forced to alter his program, removing all human decision from strategic defense mechanisms, effectively giving his creation the “illusion of free will”. And while this is one of the film’s most intriguing concepts, it is never used to produce any sort of dramatic effect. Instead, we are ultimately given a soulless avenger for which the very notion of free will is irrelevant. This happens when Detroit’s voluminous crime databank is uploaded directly into Alex's brain, causing him to snap and go on a hectic crime-solving spree that lazily propels the narrative through the later part of the film, and all the way past a rather uneventful climax.

Running a full two hours, this new Robocop film features a rather dense narrative that is filled to the brim with intriguing ideas, relevant philosophical interrogations and effective jabs at the American right. Unfortunately, none of these elements are ever bundled in a cohesive whole, living and dying a short life as mere afterthoughts in a busy screenplay that is more concerned with pleasing everybody than actually exploring its more intriguing concepts to their full extent. This unfortunately creates a mixed bag of heterogeneous ideas, hesitantly thrown together to artificially broaden the film's appeal, with each relevant issue being systematically underplayed in order to "go on to the next idea". Hence, the terrifying depiction of American interventionism present in the opening scene is given absolutely no follow-up and the whole critique of military interference is subsequently flushed down the drain, along with scraps of the “free will” issue, which are imperiously brushed aside to promote the showcase of mindless action scenes near the film’s conclusion. By setting up such a vast net to catch the maximal amount of fish, the screenwriters involved here were obviously keen to give drama fans a semblance of tragic substance, while titillating sci-fi fans with tantalizing metaphysics and throwing in some bland gunfights to please the action crowd, never realizing that they were actually creating a schizoid brainchild in the process.

Using a clean, nearly surgical break in the narrative, the film actually plays out over two distinctive and nearly independent acts, one dedicated to Robocop’s background, the other being the mere exposition of his retribution, spurred on by the aforementioned glitch in his program. Feeling helpless and inadequate when brutally force-fed a whole database full of unresolved crimes, the protagonist's brain snaps and he becomes precisely what he was engineered NOT to be, namely a mindless crime-fighting machine. With Alex's painstakingly established humanity being suddenly removed from the equation, it now seems that the laborious character development present in the first act was all in vain, effectively prompting us to root for an entirely different protagonist altogether. At this point, what is now a full-fledged robotic entity will need to reclaim his lost humanity in order to become a true character once more. But seeing how this can only be achieved with the systematic elimination of various enemies, paramount of which is power mad creator Raymond Sellars, there is no humanity to be found in his method, nor in his sappy one-liners. From a spectator's point of view, it’s hard not to feel cheated by this sudden reversal of philosophy. After insisting heavily on the need to create a willful machine, after being subjected to the cyborg’s endless hesitations during his lengthy transformation into the final product, we are soon left with the exact opposite of what we were conditioned to expect, namely an automated thug who guns down bad guys like a mere turret and conducts an investigation by simply following computer-generated clues. Aside from baffling the spectator, this 180-degree spin also helps us make sense of the automated nature of narrative progression, which is made to fulfill a certain number of disparate spectator expectations in any way possible.

Revenge is befitting equally of men and machines.

While it is an effort in dramatic contradiction, the film's lazy screenplay also features some truly jarring plot devices. Using technological upheaval at once as a key dramatic issue and a versatile narrative tool, the film relies heavily on a crude overbid of explanatory interactive screens, which effortlessly convey vital stats and additional graphic material while dazzling us with their slick display. Such convenience is cranked up to perplexing extremes with Robocop's new-found ability to remotely assess the emotional state of secondary characters. After being reprimanded by his exasperated spouse for his lack of involvement in their family life, the fully-automated protagonist suddenly indulges in a grotesque form of emotional involvement, using his cybernetic cerebellum to conjure surveillance images of his son and running an "emotional assessment" (those words are actually seen flashing on the theater screen) to better delineate the young man's despair. There's no actual form of human interaction involved here, just a dubious form of robotic sensibility achieved through modern man's agency with screens rather than people. Hence, we ultimately end up watching characters watching screens for the better part of the film, being bombarded by facts and stats in a futile attempt to draw us into a data-dominated future. And while this narrative tactic could be said to propose a relevant critique of today’s fragmented news culture, there remains a blatant intellectual dishonesty in exposing such a would-be human story through constant recourse to cold screens and ineffectual numbers. The same is true for the few sequences featuring “The Novak Report”. While I agree that these sequences successfully emulate the disturbing experience of watching Fox News, that very experience remains an integrant part of the film.

And while many of the film's crucial issues are inhumanely conveyed through explanatory screens, not unlike a video game plot, the simplistic story structure is similarly mechanical in its clinical alternation of scenes. Proceeding from the mere juxtaposition of Alex Murphy's lost humanity and the marketing efforts made by Raymond Sellars to promote his creation, the screenplay clumsily juggles two distinct types of scenes: "Robocop" scenes in which the protagonist discusses his fate with some exasperated human and "Omnicorp" scenes in which the villain discusses profitability with his team in some posh office setting. Such laborious exposition is the film's bread and butter, showcasing nearly the full range of the art direction and acting departments while moving the two main characters forward like pegs on a game of Cribbage. The whole thing is actually so inane as to remind one of a TV show. And while some truly intriguing concepts initially help us swallow the pill, the redundancy of it all soon turns the spectator's experience into a tedious ordeal. You might be surprised by this, but there is a actually a saturation point past which the sight of balding Keaton endlessly pondering on his future in front of some insignificant modern art pieces spread around his office like trophies becomes a grueling chore. And that's notwithstanding the painfully unfunny antics of Samuel L. Jackson and Jay Baruchel, who delivers a telegraphed performance that probably earned him a chunk of change equally large as the amount of credibility he’s lost with me.

The numerous office scenes are not only painful to watch because of their dubious raison d’être, but also because they make use of actors equally dynamic and expressive as the surrounding furniture. With the exception of Gary Oldman and Jackie Earle Haley, who deliver heartfelt and affective performances as two colorful robot engineers, the rest of the cast is strictly on autopilot, which further conveys the idea of a mechanically produced film. Haley’s first appearance is actually quite exhilarating as he brazenly mocks Robocop for his humanity, further providing him with the delicious moniker “Tin Man”. He then goes on to deliver the punchiest line of the film, and a very nice throwback to Verhoeven's original. After seeing one of his own machines kick the shit out of Robocop during a simulated hostage situation, and reflecting on his scrawny response time, Haley blurts out: “I wouldn’t buy that for a dollar”! No he didn’t! Yeah, he just did…And it’s a shame too, since so few of the actors here were asked to go out of their way to create engrossing characters. That said, Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman is appropriately robotic in the titular role, but so is Michael Keaton, whose unsightly baldness is hardly fitting for a high-flying executive such as Raymond Sellars (even Donald Trump makes some kind of effort to conceal the cranial signs of old age). Never raising his voice, but simply delivering his lines in the most unaffected tone possible, Keaton is only out for his paycheck, and so his Canadian comedian Jay Baruchel, who offers a toned-down version of his manic-depressive antics to better please puritanical American audiences.

Believe it or not, there are limits past which the observation of Michael
Keaton blabbering endlessly in his office becomes a chore.

Visually speaking, the film has very little to offer save for the contents of some early scenes. Two of these scenes involve Robocop's rude awakening to his new self. After being initially switched on, the poor man can hardly process the implications of his new state. Freeing himself from his captors, he then proceeds to elope from his containment chamber and run scared through Omnicorp's China-set robotics plant. Passing rows and rows of Chinese drones assembling parts in aseptic metal surroundings on his way to the loading dock, the protagonist then leaps over the outside fence and falls into the watery depths of a large rice field, against which the ominous plant towers like a sore thumb, the unsightly consecration of progress in our globalized economy. And there's another successful jab against corporate culture, which the film ultimately embraces by softening each subsequent blow. Then, there is that traumatic exercise in psychological adjustment, which sees Dr. Norton unveil the interiors of the protagonist's armor. As all robotic limbs are removed, the abdomen dismantled and the breastplates parted, what is left is a pair of lungs confined to transparent sacks, one hand, one spinal cord and a head fitted with a transparent cranium showcasing a damaged brain patched with all sorts of computer chips. That scene is actually awe-inspiring in its ability to break down humanity to its simplest expression. And despite some unsatisfying later developments, it is one that will accompany you long after leaving the theater.

Unfortunately, the remaining imagery is dubious at best, especially when it comes to the film's lackluster action sequences. The wonderful design of Robocop’s shell is initially transferred as is from the original film, complete with shimmering gray breastplates and a black plastic midsection. But that’s all changed when Sellars brazenly asks that they “make it black” in order to sell it more easily. As for the ED-209, theirs is almost a carbon copy of the original design, but it is sadly deprived of the evocative stop-motion animation that made their clumsy progression so amusing. Hence, while it is peopled with similar automated contraptions, this new iteration of crime-plagued Detroit is the scene of far less involving action sequences, the whole of which functions here as broken clockwork, or to put in contemporary terms, as a sub-par video game. Despite a crude overbid of fired shots, documentary-filmmaker José Padilha fails to generate any sort of excitement from million-dollar set-ups, most disappointing of which is a tedious night-vision confrontation with Antoine Vallon’s henchmen that translates onscreen as a mere alternation of really bad POV shots of Robocop hitting his targets through some hokey thermal tracking system and counter-shots of him being hit by enemy fire. There’s no kineticisim involved here, nor any sense of menace against the protagonist. It’s a shame too, since the film’s only saving grace seemed to derive from entertaining action sequences…

As Jean-François Lyotard posited in his study of postmodern culture, meta-narratives now tend to erode as a certain form of “everyday” realism is being cultivated by peddlers of mass entertainment. Hence, the notions of good and evil are now becoming increasingly blurred in a bid to create more realistic, but eventually less meaningful film characters. Transforming the highly stylized Tim Burton Batmans into the drab political thrillers of today is one such example of the death of cathartic moral tales. And so is the present film, where corporate greed and the suffering of occupied nations are mere facts to be coldly appraised by the audience. No longer are we to bask in the unscrupulous villainy of Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker and Ronny Cox’s Dick Jones while wishing for their violent demise. No longer are we to enjoy larger-than-life characters for everything is now life-like. And while some would call the new-found humanity of film villains “nuance”, I call it narrative “indeterminacy”. Hence, by locating Michael Keaton’s Raymond Sellars in a emotional gray zone, the film actually downplays the importance of its anti-corporate message, playing for keeps instead of indulging in truly vitriolic excess. Drama being the expressive counterpart of life, the present brand of would-be realistic drivel fails to involve our most-deeply held feelings, grazing at the surface of our cognitive minds instead, and provoking nothing but a lukewarm tingle instead of the emotional torrents stimulated by 1980s cinema.

So little humanity left in this new Robocop...

In the end, Robocop is a very disappointing film and a rapid drop into the abyss for the spectator exalted by its breathtaking opening. If I were to draw a graph of my enjoyment thereof, it would feature a straight diagonal line stretching from top to bottom. I was amazed at first to see the amount of respect bestowed on Iranian suicide bombers. Given a distinct voice (their dialogue was actually shot in their own language) and some well-deserved empathy, these terrorists go out more sadly than any of their American counterparts. For me, this meant a revolutionary departure from the average Hollywoodian action film, where there is no place for anything foreign but in body bags or the throats of some exotic starlets. Unfortunately, such radiant humanism merely exacerbated my disappointment with the film’s rocky unfolding and its shockingly overdetermined finale. And despite my first impression, it now seems that anything good stemming from my spectatorial experience was purely incidental, the fruit of a confused screenplay meant to corral as many genre fans as possible and a very timely reminder of what contemporary Hollywood is all about: market research realism.

2/5  Not unlike the titular protagonist, this new version of Robocop is strictly the result of corporate thinking, a slick but cold product with a human face meant to conceal its hollow core.