“So much is missing from the “RoboCop” remake that one scarcely knows where to begin.
A doomed Detroit, plunging into a crime-ridden abyss, is turned suburban and blase here. That robs the film of the desperation, the “We’ll try anything to make ourselves safe,” even armed machines among us, that the plot is supposed to hang on.
Lip-smacking, mustache-twirling over-the-top villainy? Gone. We’ve got corporate Michael Keaton and his hireling (Jackie Earle Haley) and a cut-rate crook who couldn’t hold a candle to Kurtwood Smith’s career-making turn as a bad, bad man in the ’87 original.
The pathos, a good cop, left for dead but just human enough when he’s brought back to life — gone.
The mordant wit of the violence, the satiric tongue-in-cheek charge that Paul Verhoeven’s had, commenting on crime, dying cities, technological solutions to social problems? That becomes a strident commentary on drone warfare and killing by machine, a commentary voiced by a TV talk show host (Samuel L. Jackson) who is in FAVOR of bringing armed machines to our streets and the skies above them.
The Brazilian director Jose Padilha brings none of the energy of his “Elite Squad” films, and he wastes $100 million and a cast that includes Keaton and Jackson and Haley and Abbie Cornish and Jennifer Ehle and the Great Gary Oldman, as the scientist who masterminds what his boss (Keaton) describes as “a product with a conscience.”
Every performance is enervated, starting with the star, Joel Kinnaman from TV’s “The Killing.” The effects that make this cop, disembodied and disemboweled by a bomb, a convincing human heart and head on a machine’s frame, confine Kinnaman and limit his performance. Peter Weller didn’t have that problem in ’87, but never mind.
The story — Detective Alex Murphy, on the trail of a bad guy, suspecting corrupt elements of his own department, is blown up in front of his wife and kid (Abbie Cornish, John Paul Ruttan). Drone-builder Omnicorp’s CEO (Keaton) and his not-quite-mad scientist (Oldman) talk Murphy’s wife into letting them “Save” him by putting him into a robot.
Omnicorp wants America to buy and use drones and killer robots in the U.S., which is against the law. Murphy could give them a way around that.
Haley (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”) plays the skeptical security expert and mercenary who doesn’t want human beings involved in this sort of work. He tests the remade Murphy’s combat skills to the tune of “If I Only Had a Heart,” and calls him “Tin Man.”
And every so often, Jackson shows up as Pat Novak, fear-mongering icon of TV talk, complaining on his show of America’s “robo-phobia.”
There’s barely a laugh in this thing. The cast is shockingly decaffeinated, with the animated Jay Baruchel (marketing creep) the dullest he’s ever been, Keaton going at half speed and the wonderful Jennifer Ehle looking bored playing the boss’s assistant.
From it’s inception, this felt cynical, even by the usual standards of a Hollywood remake. There are points to be made about drones and taking the human element out of war. But this script — aside from Jackson/Novak’s lectures about that, never scores satiric points in that argument.
Yes, the technology has improved in the 27 years that have passed. But the ensuing years have also produced first person shooter video games which utterly preclude the need for this as a movie.

Visceral, violent toys that they are, they still have more heart than this.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action including frenetic gun violence throughout, brief strong language, sensuality and some drug material
Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earl Haley, Jennifer Ehle, Michael K. Lewis, Jay Baruchel
Credits: Directed by Jose Padilha, scripted by Joshua Zetumer, based on the 1987 film. A Columbia/MGM release.
Running time: 1:43