Director: José Padilha
Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson
Have I Seen It Before: Sure. I was essentially obligated, wasn’t I? Although one could imagine me sitting in the theater, stone-faced and with my arms crossed, waiting for disappointment to unfurl.
Did I Like It: Even now, I’m sitting at the keyboard and ready to trash the film. On spec, a PG-13 remake of Robocop (1987) should be one of those ideas that just shouldn’t be. The kind of thing that Rob Zombie is content to ignore, and Zemeckis has protections against written into his contract*.
Surely, this film, long before The Flash (2023) puts The Michael Keaton Rule** to the test.
And yet, here it is. No, it’s not as good as the original. Few things are, not just in this franchise, but on the planet earth.
Is it a passable action film? Sure. Should anybody be embarrassed that they cashed a check from this? Na, although exactly nobody is here for any other reason. Does it have anything to say about the nature of the ghost in machine that has only become more relevant in the decade plus since its release? Not really. If it did, it would have re-entered (or entered for the first time) the cultural conversation long before I broke down and re-watched it for review. Is it forgettable? Yeah, pretty much.
It isn’t bad, necessarily. Then again, maybe it’s awful and certain elements manage to save it. Maybe the Michael Keaton Rule works better than even I thought.
*Which probably makes up for a lot of his future missteps.
**My notion that Michael Keaton automatically improves a film’s quality by 15%. Whereby I still apologize for The Flash, and consider Multiplicity (1996) to be the mathematically—if not emotionally—perfect film.