"Man vs Robot"

Title: Robocop

Year: 2014

Genre: Acción, Crimen, C. Fiction

Director: José Padilha

Writer: Joshua Zetumer (screenplay), Edward Neumeier y Michael Miner (1987 screenplay)

Runtime: 117min 

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K. Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Samuel L. Jackson

Prod.: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Columbia Pictures, Strike Entertainment

Budget: $100 million aprox.

I think that saying that no good movie should be touched, sounds too exaggerated. It´s certainly true that there are titles which are so good, we tend to say they shouldn’t be remade. Think of Schindler's List (1993), Citizen Kane (1941) and The Godfather (1972). And yet, no one ensures us these stories have been told in the only best possible way. Let's then go further back and have a look at Gone with the Wind (1939), also considered a masterpiece. Seeing what it was in its time, it´s clear that today it could be remade and improved, for example, in the acting or in the coloring technique. Finally, if the term remake applies to the best cinema, why not use it for a not so good film. Robocop would be ideal, since, in spite of the fanaticism of many, it is far from being a great movie.

Comparing the original to this one, Padilha definitely touches up the argument for more. Gives Alex Murphy´s (Joel Kinnaman) family a much greater role than before, making Clara (Abbie Cornish) an insistent wife, who refuses to give up on someone that doesn´t even look like her Alex. Further, he fills the movie with controversy, given the high control Omnicorp´s got over the mind and body of the new policeman. Here it is set out the possibility that some day we were no longer our own owners.

This Robocop puts us in 2028, where American company Omnicorp has been selling overseas the ultimate protection for citizens, and that hasn´t yet commercialized into the American market.

The downside is that we see how this works from the streets of Tehran (Iran), where people´s faces are more of fear than of tranquility. An Iranian with explosives, dropping on one of these machines is what was missing to emphasize the idea of ​​terrorism, so associated with the Western Asian countries.

But Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), CEO of Omnicorp, intends, by any means, to insert himself into the local market. For this, he first has to deal with those who oppose to, that machines without feelings or values, patrol the streets. The key to expand lies in the creation of policemen, half robot, half human, and where Alex Murphy is the best candidate. Thanks to his wife Clara, who didn´t want to lose him, Omnicorp can give an almost dead man, a second chance.

When, after the explosion, Alex wakes up and sees he´s Robocop, is where the remake gains ground to the original. Padilha talks about things that today may be of science fiction, but that could soon become reality.

Same as Verhoeven´s, this Robocop´s got it’s strictly police side, with our vigilante firing against crime. However, here it deepens more on all of what the company is capable of doing to come out wining, even if it means being anti-ethical and lying.

The film puts into question where is that begins the man and finishes the robot, where begins the father and husband and ends the policeman, or what´s of Murphy´s rights, when he can no longer decide for himself.

Padilha at the same time takes certain liberties, such as inconsistencies in the way in which Murphy solves his attempted murder. With that, all he does is to show us aspects of Robocop, which never before had he mention he had, and that don´t even fit.

My rating: 7/10

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