Director José Padilha
Starring Joel Kinnaman, Douglas Urbanski, Abbie Cornish
Rated M
Score 3/6

In 2028 Detroit, when Alex Murphy a loving husband, father and good cop – is critically injured in the line of duty, the multinational conglomerate OmniCorp sees their chance for a part-man, part-robot police officer.

Robotics and the question of humanity have always been one of the more interesting aspects of the science fiction. Now those for you who disapprove of filmmakers who raid the 1980’s ideas piggybank in the pursuit of the all-important dollar probably won’t go see this no matter how many good points I make the movie. Personally I don’t blame you because there have more than a few remakes (some of which that don’t belong to the 80’s ideas piggybank) that have fallen short.
I went to see this one purely out of curiosity and before I actually went to the friendly neighbourhood cinema I was of the opinion ‘why did they even bother?’ ‘Was a reboot or remake of this movie even needed?’
This reboot was watchable, paid tribute to the original in some small ways and the evolution of special effects of the past 27 years was very evident on the screen but somehow I got the feeling that the filmmakers seemed to fail catch the overall essence of the 1987 version (admittedly it has been awhile since I have seen the ’87 version and I may have to revisit to freshen my memory). The reboot came across as a straight dark gritty cop movie where as the ’87 version was the cop movie but it had something more to say.