RoboCop

I was just as skeptical as everyone else when I heard that they were going to remake Paul Verhoeven's 1987 classic RoboCop. There had already been a remake of Total Recall and there's probably one in the pipeline for Starship Troopers (I seriously hope that doesn't happen). I believed that the new film would gloss over the subtext and satire of the original and just make a straight action film. I was totally wrong. It is insanely satirical and ironic and even, in its own way, anti-American.

The set-up and plot are basically the same as the original. Hero cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) angers a Detroit crime boss and gets blown up in the process. Multinational conglomerate OmniCorp, which develops military-grade robotics for every country but America is desperate to break into the market in its home nation. They need a product that will appeal to the American people with a human touch, so with the help of Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) they create RoboCop, using the near dead body of Alex Murphy. Murphy soon finds out the capitalist intentions of OmniCorp and it's sleazy CEO Raymond Sellers (Michael Keaton) and embarks on a mission to stop them.

Gone is the original's religious allegory for RoboCop being a metaphor for Jesus, that was something put in at the behest of Paul Verhoeven. Instead this film takes a harsh look at US foreign policy in a pre-credits sequence that takes place in Iran with a US "freedom" operation taking place. This is a reference to the the current unfriendly relationship between Iran and the US. In this sequence, there is a hilarious reference to WikiLeaks hackers attacking Greenpeace in the CNN style news crawl at the bottom of the screen.

I bring that up because the next thing that the film satirises is the far-right news stations in the US, such as Fox News. This show is hosted by an incredibly restrained Samuel L. Jackson, who despite his best effort lets slip his trademark 'motherfucker' line. In his news segments, he attacks the liberal opponents to the integration of robots into society, just like Bill O'Reilly is wont to do on Fox News in opposition to whatever left-wing policy is trying to be passed.

The film is also an opponent of flagrant capitalism that takes place in the US. This was present in the original, but here it takes the concept to a whole new level. The evil Sellers wants to introduce his products into the US because he believes that would yield an extremely higher profit for him. He and his colleagues wish to exploit RoboCop for every dollar he can bring them.

The final nail in the coffin of this film being un-American comes down to its casting. This may be a long shot, so bear with me. When I first saw who was going to be in the film, I felt dismay, great actors such as Gary Oldman and the best Batman of them all, Michael Keaton, had been relegated to acting in remakes of classic 80s films. But now I see that all the casting was strategic. All the 'good guy' roles are played by non-American actors, Joel Kinnaman is Swedish, Abbie Cornish is Australian and Gary Oldman is British, all the antagonists are played by American actors. The sole exception to this rule is Michael K. Williams, but he is the only exception.

Verdict: An insanely satirical film where most of the subtext will fly over some viewers heads, but still a great action film.