Monday Morning Critic – RoboCop & The Passage Of Time: How A Classic Can Become a One Night Stand

Columns, Top Story

Pulp-O-Mizer_Cover_Image (3)

I have to admit that when I went to see the RoboCop remake I went with a twinge of excitement. I sat down and rewatched the original again, of course, last week and that same sort of geeky genre love made me plunk down the few dollars I had in my wallet for a ticket. I had called it skippable last week, of course, but nostalgia tricked me again into giving a film a chance it otherwise wouldn’t have.

It wasn’t awful, I admit, but it wasn’t all that good either. RoboCop was about as good as my buddy Travis (and Inside Pulse Movies Editor in Chief) thought, which was aggressively mediocre. It was perfectly acceptable but not something I need to see again. RoboCop was a film about a man who nearly dies, should have died even, but comes back as a Cyborg with a badge who winds up solving his own attempted murder.

1174829 - ROBOCOP

The film was more memorable for me because of the senior citizen behind me who wouldn’t shut up. After asking him nicely he advised I could sit elsewhere. I advised him I would and, after grabbing my coat, I looked him right in the eyes and told him to go stuff himself and referred to him as a part of the anatomy that wasn’t so flattering. In actuality it was a bunch of curse words, very loudly, but this is a family friendly website and thus I do have to make my language (like this film) PG-13.

I do have to say … seeing an elderly man get noticeably intimidated after acting like a tough guy in front of his much younger wife was worth the $11 I paid to see the film.

The interesting thing about the 2014 version of RoboCop was just how profoundly time has passed by the need for a RoboCop film. The thing about the original is that it was a parody of the violent, Pax Americana style of American action films that ruled the roost in the ‘80s while also being a great violent, Pax Americana style of American action film. Years later it holds up because it’s a great film, of course, and the parody is more pronounced several decades removed.

RonnyCoxRobocop

It had a great cast and it’s interesting to see Kurtwood Smith in the original, as I keep expecting him to threaten to put his foot up RoboCop’s backside. The new film has an equally good cast, as well, as seeing Samuel L Jackson as a right wing Al Sharpton and Omar from The Wire as a cop was pretty solid. Jackie Early Haley and Gary Oldman in there, as well, made for a great supporting cast of a lot of terrific talent. The one thing I’ll give credit to RoboCop is that it went all out in casting the right people for the film.

I doubt that this new version of RoboCop will have any more than a temporary resonance in the world of cinema, at best, because it doesn’t have any substance to it. I like to call it a one night stand in cinematic terms at least; it’s there, it occupies time and when it’s there it does so with tremendous vigor. But after a couple hours you’re done and you don’t need to see it again.

Stuff for General George S. Pimpage, Esq

From elsewhere in the Inside Pulse Network:

I took a look at the About Last Night remake. Was very good, my review here.

Travis took on Robocop. Not as good, review here.

Mike Noyes took on Girl Most Likely on DVD.

And now on MMC … we LIFT!

If you want to pimp anything email it to me with a good reason why. It helps to bribe me with stuff, just saying ….

A Movie A Week – The Challenge

do the right thing

This week’s DVD – Do The Right Thing

It’s hot as hell in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn in July 1989. Mookie (Spike Lee) is delivering Pizzas in the largely African-American neighborhood for the last Italian Pizza joint in the neighborhood, Sal’s. Things will never be the same after today, though, for everyone in the neighborhood. Spike Lee’s ascent to the mainstream begins with Do The Right Thing.

The film focuses on Mookie and this pizza place. Sal (Danny Aiello) has been in the neighborhood with his business for 25 years and regards it as a second home. His son Pino (John Turturro) doesn’t hold the same view. His other son Vito (Richard Edson) is friends with Mookie. We get to see Sal, clinging to his pizza place as his last view of the neighborhood the way it was when he opened it, in the newfound reality that he’s the last white storeowner in a neighborhood that long since housed a multicultural citizenship.

All the while a diverse group of characters exist and interact within this neighborhood, as a spark that develops early in the film builds into a fire that consumes everything by the end.

Historically this is considered Spike Lee’s finest hour, of course, but I think its reputation is mainly because it got screwed over for nearly every major award rather than on its artistic merits. Sometimes we reward those who were perceived as being victims with immortality, especially in a year when Driving Miss Daisy seemed to be the antithesis of this film. It’s crazy, 25 years after its release, to think that one of these won an Oscar and the other was considered “screwed over” for even a nomination in most categories.

This is always pointed out as one of those “masterpiece” films but I don’t see it. It was solid, with a beautiful performance by Danny Aiello, but this is a film that really hasn’t aged all that well over the years. I didn’t think much of it, honestly, and this felt like a film you watch once and don’t have to revisit.

Not recommended.

What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 tall boys of Red Fox and community college co-eds with low standards at the Fox and Hound

3 Days To Kill – Kevin Costner is dying on some disease but the cure is only a dead terrorist in Europe away.

Skip It – Costner normally has better taste than a film as putrid, as DTV looking as this. Usually.

Pompeii – The final days of the city destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius.

Skip It – Paul W.S Anderson is the ultimate skip-it director.

Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @ScottSawitz .