ccatiller12

I wanted this movie to be a "so bad it's good" gem very much. The cover looked like a classic 80s cheese-fest that would fill me with much joy and laughter. The opening scene was promising. However, my initial expectations were eventually butchered and thrown into the water like fish bait.

The movie gave me little to no reason to invest in the characters. There's almost no backstory for anyone including the lead, David (Treat Williams). What little backstory you get isn't really explored or establishes solid character motivation. Even with the lack of character development, I was at least hoping for some charismatic acting or cheesy dialogue to keep me entertained. Unfortunately, there isn't much of it.

The soundtrack was laughably terrible. I'm sure they used the same track of suspense music for every "tense" moment in the movie whether it was a gun fight or a shark attack. It is super irritating after having heard it for the 100th time. It will forever be ingrained in my memory.

I wasn't expecting a stellar plot or anything but it was a complete mess. It's like the writer said, "I want to make Diamonds Are Forever," but the director said, "I want to make Jaws." So they compromised and combined them into one movie.

As bad as this movie was, there were a few moments that were enjoyable. Almost all of them involved the shark (or sharks? I'm not sure cause they seemed to use footage of multiple species like tigers, lemons, reefs and maybe bull sharks). The attacks were well shot and edited cutting between real and fake sharks. Not saying it was Jaws quality but decent enough for a movie like this.

In the end, there really isn't enough "so bad it's good" moments in this movie to recommend it. It's really boring for long stretches and the scenes with the shark are too few and far between to justify wasting 86 minutes of your life (it felt way longer than 86 minutes).

FUN FACT: Did you know tiger sharks can roar? I didn't until I watched this movie. Maybe a "nod" to a worse film, Jaws: The Revenge.

With all the remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels seemingly being released every weekend these days, I just groaned and rolled my eyes at the thought of a RoboCop remake. Coming into this movie, I wanted to hate this movie. First, cause I'm tired of all the Hollywood remakes, and second, cause I loved the original RoboCop. My expectations couldn't be lower. How could they do the original justice, or make it any better? Just another cash grab I thought. So I began watching the RoboCop 2014 with my arms crossed.

After watching the movie, however, I found myself to be surprisingly surprised that the movie didn't completely suck. Not that it was a good movie. There were plenty of things that were wrong with it, but as far as remakes go, it was fairly competent. What made the original movie great was the over-the-top satirizing of American culture and ultra-violence without delving too much into the aspects of humanity and technology. It had its own charm about it. With the remake, Jose Padilha approached the material from a different direction: focus on RoboCop's human identity in relation to technology. What really make man a man? I appreciated the attempt to approach RoboCop from a different perspective.

Despite the attempt at presenting a fresh take on the character, the interesting concepts of technology and humanity get lost and muddled in the film as the plot develops. Much of the action feels flat and tension free thanks in part to bad CGI. Several of the characters are poorly developed such as Murphy's family and the villains. I found myself not really caring for the wife and son. There isn't much happy family interaction that tells me the Murphys are a happy family. I didn't really feel like I had any reason to hate the villains other than the fact they were either money loving corporate scum or total jerks. All these things seem to drown out the good things the movie had going for it until I'm left watching the credits roll thinking, "Eh. Wasn't terrible. Could've been worse, but it could've been awesome too. I guess it's just whatever."

In the end, if I had to recommend the movie to someone, I think I would. I didn't really care for the movie. In fact, I was kind of bored by the end. However, I can't deny that it is a decent remake thanks to new concepts, solid performances from Oldman and Keaton, and I guess a good performance from Kinnaman.