- Composed by Pedro Bromfman
- Sony Classical (!) / 2014 / 54m
The world has finally got what it’s been waiting over a quarter of a century for, a remake of RoboCop. Somehow my life now feels complete. Some of us not only remember the original RoboCop, we also remember its score. It was a Basil Poledouris score – it sounded like Basil Poledouris. It didn’t sound like anyone else. It sounded like it had been uniquely crafted for the movie RoboCop. It didn’t sound like it could have been written for any action thriller released in 1987 or the few years either side of it. It had a kick-ass main theme – people even remembered it after they had finished watching the movie. But that’s so 1987. It’s 2014 now, kids. But wait… Pedro Bromfman? He’s not a Remote Control clone. He’s scored the director’s previous movies – this is the potential big break for the composer as well as the director. Phew!
No, sorry, no phew. There is one – and only one – moment of sheer class in this new RoboCop score. That comes in track three. It only lasts for 50 seconds, but it’s everything film music should be – distinctive, memorable, creative, honed to the film and the character. It’s Basil Poledouris’s original RoboCop theme. The rest of the 55-minute album is the polar opposite – uncreative, almost obscenely generic, the standard John Powell action ostinato everywhere you look, the HORN OF DOOM, it’s all here in this dull-beyond-belief example of the Remote Control poison. What a shame. The parts that aren’t dull-beyond-belief – and I must be fair, because there are some – are just yet more Powell/Bourne soundalikes. Is this RoboCop? Is it Captain Phillips? Is it Ender’s Game? Who knows? Who cares? I do, but evidently nobody who actually matters does.
Rating: *
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