Film Review: RoboCop

Compared with Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original, the new RoboCop does not only have better technology at its disposal but also launches a much more scathing attack on the politics of the day. A television show hosted by Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson) regularly interrupts the flow of the action to provide commentary on (or rather, a push for) the need to bring machines to the country in order to combat the rising crime rate.

We can see the benefit of having these machines around, as shown in one of the first scenes, set in Tehran, but at the same time we also feel the fear they generate and the increase in violence in protest to the affront on people’s dignity, as they are now scanned and searched everywhere they go by the machines’ X-ray vision.

The film, set in the 2020s, tells us that most of the world is already applying these machines in everyday life, and that it is working quite successfully. For whatever reason, the United States has not allowed them to roam the streets and bring down crime, although it is rather dubious that the lobby of the military industrial complex has not been more persuasive. Whatever the case may be, one man with a bowtie is standing in the way of the very ominous-sounding OmniCorp’s plans to replace police officers with their own drones.

For the full review, please visit The Prague Post.

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