I haven’t seen the original version. OK, so that’s out of the way.

On the positive side, Samuel L. Jackson is wonderful to watch, even if his character is pretty superfluous. Reporting for Fox News – I mean, “The Novak Element” – he brings the majority of gusto to the film and his parts are the highlights . In addition, Gary Oldman is excellent playing the Frankenstein role, being the voice of reason throughout the film.

There are some cool visuals to be found in RoboCop; seeing the action through the eponymous hero’s POV is competently done.

However, everything else in the film is pretty disappointing. Joel Kinnaman is forgettable, much of the storyline concerning police corruption is tedious and, countering my previous argument, certain visuals are disappointing (here, I’m mainly referring to when Detective Murphy is shown as just a head, heart and lungs)

I will admit that the film improves in the second half where Murphy actually gets to be RoboCop but even then, much of the action simply involves characters shooting at each other with no dramatic flair or excitement at all. Plus, to get to all of this, we have to sit through the first half, which is po-faced and uninteresting.

So this has been a short review, mainly because this film isn’t interesting enough to be talked about!

Similar to Dredd, only far less exciting, RoboCop is a pretty basic, by-the-numbers sci-fi action film.

★ ★ ★