RoboCop

Directed by José Padilha

(PG-13)

**

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This remake isn’t the botch job you might have expected, said Leslie Felperin in The Hollywood Reporter. It lacks the “evil wit” of 1987’s RoboCop, but a strong cast and a “thoughtful, dense script” have aided a transformation resulting in a “markedly more family-friendly” piece of mainstream entertainment. Joel Kinnaman steps into the title role as a Detroit police officer who, after barely cheating death, is refashioned by a powerful corporation into a cyborg tasked with cleaning up a city awash in crime. Kinnaman “lacks the lithe wryness” that Peter Weller brought to the part, but the new star “has his own cool authority” and the rest of the cast all elevate the material, said Guy Lodge in Variety. “Best in show” is Gary Oldman, who, as the scientist who assembles RoboCop, “does a good deal of the film’s emotional legwork.” But Brazilian director José Padilha is “gunning for a more widespread audience” than Paul Verhoeven targeted with his darkly satirical original, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). The result “chugs along fine” but “seems actively scared of challenging us.”