Rating summary
Movie | | 3.5 |
Video | | 5.0 |
Audio | | 4.5 |
Extras | | 2.5 |
Overall | | 4.0 |
RoboCop Blu-ray Movie Review
We Can Rebuild It; We Have the Technology
Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 30, 2014
A collective groan greeted the announcement that MGM was remaking RoboCop, followed by
howls of protest at the news that the remake would be rated PG-13. Director Paul Verhoeven's
1987 original famously pushed the limits on gore and goo,
even before restoration of the trims
required to obtain an R rating. (Current audiences usually see Verhoeven's bloodier director's
cut, which is the version most commonly available on video.) How could one possibly do
RoboCop without a copious amount of spatter? (Let's not debate whether Irvin Kershner had
already done so in RoboCop 2.) During production,
reports were leaked of running battles
between studio executives and Brazilian director José Padilha (Elite Squad: The Enemy Within),
making his debut English-language feature, with the director pushing for the tougher rating and
the studio insisting on a PG-13 to maximize box office, especially given the film's burgeoning
cost.
Padilha may have lost the ratings battle, but he won the war of ideas. A devoted fan of
Verhoeven's RoboCop, it was Padilha who first suggested the remake to MGM when they were
pitching him other projects. Working with up-and-coming screenwriter Joshua Zetumer (whose
script was reportedly doctored by several uncredited hands), Padilha followed the path blazed by
RoboCop's original writers, Edward Neumaier and Michael Miner, who used the story of an
involuntary cyborg to comment obliquely on issues of their time. Though Padilha's film borrows
key story points, and his film is studded with affectionate references to the 1987 original, several
critical differences radically transform the story. I discuss some of them after the first screenshot;
so readers who haven't seen the new RoboCop and want to experience it without any knowledge
of its plot should skip that section entirely.
Verhoeven's
RoboCop arose from an era in which America was preoccupied with a seemingly
unstoppable tide of urban crime. It was also the era of
Wall
Street and Gordon Gekko, when
corporate takeovers, spinoffs and consolidations were transforming the service and employment
landscape so rapidly that Verhoeven's depiction of police privatization by OmniConsumer
Products (or " OCP") had a timely satiric sting. As the solution to a threatened police strike, OCP
proposed robotic automation, and the RoboCop program was a last-minute stopgap when the
original robot "cop", the ED-209, malfunctioned. Only after OCP perfected what it called "urban
pacification" by automating the police department did it plan to market these products to the
military.
In the new film, however, priorities are reversed, as foreign policy drives domestic priorities.
Omnicorp, which turns out to be a subsidiary of OCP, supplies robots to the military. The ED-209 functions perfectly, and, together with the smaller,
lighter EM-208, a human-shaped robot, it
has entirely replaced Army assault troops. Padilha's
RoboCop opens with a news crew covering
these automated forces keeping the peace on the streets of Tehran, assisted by a fleet of airborne
drones. When a group of "insurgents" attacks the robots, they are quickly blown to smithereens.
The head of Omnicorp, Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), is frustrated, because he cannot sell
his products for domestic law enforcement, which is the biggest potential market in the world.
Robots are barred from that arena by the federal Dreyfus Act, named after its sponsor Senator
Hubert Dreyfus (Zach Grenier). Sellars and his advisers, general counsel Liz Kline (Jennifer
Ehle) and marketing chief Tom Pope (Jay Baruchel), have twisted and finagled every possible
angle to evade the Dreyfus Act, without success. Then Sellars has a brainstorm: Let's put a
man
inside a machine. It's good PR, and it's a loophole in the law.
Thus, instead of being an orphan project suddenly elevated to top priority in a corporate power
grab, as in Verhoeven's film, the new RoboCop is an integral element of Omnicorp's marketing
strategy from its inception. The science becomes the responsibility of Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary
Oldman), who has been quietly researching methods to restore amputees' lost functions with
artificial limbs that respond to neural commands. Sellars asks Norton to take his project to the
extreme by creating a full-fledged cyborg. After a long screening process, they choose Detroit
police detective Alex Murphy as their subject (Joel Kinnaman,
The Killing).
Like the Alex Murphy so memorably played by Peter Weller, Kinnaman's Murphy has a wife,
Clara (Abbie Cornish), and a son, David (John Paul Ruttan). He also has a loyal partner named
Lewis, only this time around the partner is a man (Michael K. Williams,
The
Wire). Once again,
Murphy is the victim of a powerful gangster—here named Antoine Vallon (Patrick
Garrow)—with major influence and heavy weaponry, but the events have nothing to do with
Omnicorp. It's pure coincidence that Murphy is grievously injured at just the moment when
Sellars and Dr. Norton are looking for a RoboCop test subject. And unlike Weller's Murphy,
Kinnaman's doesn't die or lose his memory. He remains very much alive and himself, as his
tearful wife signs the consent forms for Dr. Norton to do whatever it takes to save him. Clara
remains a part of the story, first stoically, then desperately determined to bring her husband home
to his family.
The expanded role of the Murphy family in Padilha's film underlines perhaps its most significant
innovation. In Verhoeven's
RoboCop, the title character solved his own murder but never
regained his memory; his triumph at the end was to recover a semblance of humanity by adopting
his former name. But Kinnaman's RoboCop never stops being Alex Murphy. From the moment
he wakes up in the elaborate motorized prosthesis that is now his body, Murphy struggles to
come to terms with his drastically changed circumstances. That struggle proves to be
inconvenient for Omnicorp, because it interferes with the purpose for which RoboCop was
created. His human face makes him presentable to the public, but it also makes him less
predictable. As immediately spotted by the company's robot wrangler, Rick Mattox (the
excellent Jackie Early Haley), the cyborg's organic component—in other words, the human
element—is a step backward for the company's highly efficient product line. Mattox refuses to
call Murphy "RoboCop"; he prefers "Tin Man".
Verhoeven's film turned on a corporate battle between the ruthless OCP executive Dick Jones,
who wanted RoboCop destroyed so that Jones's own product line could take his place, and
upstart VP Bob Morton, who had snuck the RoboCop program past Jones. In Padilha's film, by
contrast, the battle becomes one between Omnicorp and RoboCop himself, as the company
discovers that putting a man inside a machine makes the machine uncontrollable. Ironically, Dr.
Norton finds himself deceiving and "dumbing down" the man inside, through neurological
programming and biochemical manipulation, until the Alex Murphy who first woke up with a
prosthetic body has been almost entirely erased. His wife, Clara, no longer sees her husband
when she looks in his eyes. He appears, moves and sounds very much like Peter Weller's
RoboCop: a soulless cyborg who only mimics humanity. But he still
looks human enough to
sway public opinion and get the Dreyfus Act repealed—at which point Omnicorp no longer
needs him, and Sellars decides to end the program.
As in the 1987 film, TV broadcasts provide a running commentary, but television has changed in
the intervening decades. Instead of the jokey local news broadcasts with their satirical
commercials, we get a tendentious cable news show,
The Novak Element, hosted by an
immaculately coiffed advocate of robotics, Pat Novak. In an ingenious casting choice, Novak is
played by Samuel L. Jackson, who gives Novak much the same intimidating tone he used for his
Bible-quoting Jules in
Pulp Fiction. Novak may be
better
dressed than Jules and use flashy
graphics instead of a pistol, but he's still a hired gun whose job is to advance the interests of
Omnicorp. Novak's segments reflects today's diversified media world, where channels can thrive
on a segmented audience of like-minded viewers and hectoring know-it-alls can be found at all
points along the political spectrum. Novak is a terrific orator, but pay attention to what he
actually says, and it makes no sense. When he celebrates the incorruptibility of robots because,
unlike cops, they can't be bribed or bought, it's all true—and it's also irrelevant. What about the
people who own and direct the robots? What about Novak himself?
RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
According to the best information I could find, RoboCop was shot with a combination of Red
Epic and Arri Alexa digital cameras. The cinematographer was Pedilha's frequent collaborator,
Lula Carvalho. Integrated with an array of digital effects, the final image was color-corrected on
a digital intermediate, from which Fox/MGM's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably
sourced. The image is pristine, crisp, detailed and generally spectacular. RoboCop's black suit is
both solid black and, where appropriate, shinily reflective. The bright colors of some of the more
festive scenes (e.g., the formal introduction of RoboCop to the public at police headquarters) are
deep and saturated, while darker, dingier scenes like the training exercise overseen by Rick
Mattox are appropriately dull and muted, but with good shadow detail. A scene set outside Dr.
Norton's facility in China and the opening sequence in Tehran provide variations in the color
palette, and all the lab sequences gleam with the brightness of panels and instruments. The city of
Detroit itself (really, Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario) looks shiny and modern. (In a deleted
scene, Omnicorp CEO Sellars indicates that the company "cleaned up" the city.)
Video noise, aliasing and other artifacts are wholly absent. The average bitrate of 26.29 Mbps is
not the highest we've seen for an action-packed film of this nature, but it's certainly adequate,
especially given the film's digital origination.
RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
RoboCop's 5.1 sound mix, presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, is a thunderously
satisfying affair with plenty of gunfire and several major battle scenes to rattle unsecured items
off the shelves of any viewer with a powerful sound system. When the new sheriff in town first
takes to the streets, director Padilha doesn't waste time with petty crime; his RoboCop attacks a
drug lab single-handedly, where machine gun fire and hand grenades are all in a day's work. A
massive shootout with kingpin Antoine Vallon and his gang involves heavy artillery and rapid
fire. In a game of one-upsmanship with the first film, this RoboCop fights not just one ED-209
unit, but several, all of which fire their cannons repeatedly. Gears turn, metal screeches and
chunks of metal crash to the ground.
Still, some of the most impressive sonic moments in RoboCop are subtler. In the first Novak
Element broadcast, the film gracefully transitions from the viewing screen in Novak's studio to
the streets of Tehran where the reporters are on the ground; as they step into the street, the
humming and clanking of the robot army fills the surround array and immediately puts the viewer
into the scene. When Mattox arranges a "grudge match" test for RoboCop against dozens of EM-208 units, the camera races through the giant
warehouse in which the robots are taking their
positions to attack, and the sound of each one cocking its weapons zips through the surrounds.
The whispers, whirs and hums of the mechanisms in Dr. Norton's labs are eerie in their soft
efficiency. RoboCop's sound mix is often most effective at its quietest.
Dialogue is always clear, and the score by Pedro Bromfman (another regular member of
Padilha's team) is appropriately energetic. A brief quotation from Basil Poledouris' score for the
1987 film can be heard during the opening credits.
RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
- Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.40:1; 3:59): A "play all" function is included.
- Pentagon
- Right Hand
- Helicopter
- Lewis and Dean
- Norton Confesses to Dreyfus
- Omnicorp Product Announcement (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:27): A "play all" function is
included.
- Exo-Skeleton
- EM-208
- ED-209
- XT-908
- Cruiser 1
- TSR-66
- M2 Battle Rifle
- RC-2000 V1
- RC-2000 V3
- Next Generation RoboCop
- RoboCop: Engineered for the 21st Century (1080p; 1.78:1): A "play all" function is
included.
- The Illusion of Free Will: A New Vision (7:46): This featurette focuses on
differences between Padilha's RoboCop and Verhoeven's.
- To Serve and Protect: RoboCop's New Weapons (6:05): As the title suggests, this
featurette takes a closer look at the specific weapons used by this RoboCop and
also at the weapons training that prepared actor Joel Kinnaman for the role.
- The RoboCop Suit: Form and Function (14:54): This featurette examines the
design of the new suit and the demands of wearing it. A highlight is Michael
Keaton's comparison to the rigors of wearing his suit for Tim Burton's Batman.
- Theatrical Trailer 1 (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:12): Emphasizes the theme of man vs. machine.
- Theatrical Trailer 2 (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:12): Introduces the theme of commercial
exploitation.
- Sneak Peak (1080p; various; 8:34): A "play all" function is included. The items marked
with an asterisk also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward
button.
RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
Paul Verhoeven's 1987 RoboCop remains an unsurpassable classic, partly because it came first
and partly because Verhoeven's cheerfully offensive visuals have a unique panache that no one
else could hope to equal. But Padilha's 2014 version offers its own pleasures, if one approaches
it with an open mind and doesn't expect it to replicate the Verhoeven experience. If the original
is what you want, it's readily available. This is a different movie,
and the Blu-ray presentation is
excellent. Highly recommended.