Watch RoboCop Movie

The existential battle that rages through “RoboCop,” a nicely cast, respectable remake of the wittily corrosive 1987 Paul Verhoeven film, is less the struggle between man and machine than between the original’s pop nihilism and the bottom-line commercialism driving this new vehicle. Once again, an ordinary man, a Detroit cop, Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), is transformed by corporate interests into a cyborg after being critically wounded in the line of duty. And, as before, the reanimated creature walks and talks like a latter-day Frankenstein’s monster, his recognizably human parts encased in an artificial carapace, although this version also mixes in tears with the bullets. Related Coverage The actor Joel Kinnaman plays a Detroit police officer reconstructed as a cyborg in José Padilha’s “RoboCop,” a remake of the 1987 thriller. Emotions Churning Under ArmorFEB. 7, 2014 Every generation, apparently, gets the “RoboCop” it deserves, or perhaps desires. When the first one hit in the summer of 1987, Ronald Reagan was halfway through his second term as president and, as the movie’s socioeconomic pokes and Star Wars program parody suggested, ripe for the lampooning. Set in a crime-plagued Detroit, Mr. Verhoeven’s movie paints a vision of a failed American city scarred by derelict industrial zones and plagued by rampant crime, in which the only hope of salvation comes from privatization in the form of a corporation, OmniCorp. Helplessly overrun, the police are threatening to strike (evoking the air traffic controllers Reagan fired in 1981), when RoboCop (Peter Weller) clunks in, bombarding the town he also finally saves.