Joel Kinnaman is RoboCop. That’s gotta be pretty cool for him. But this RoboCop is a little different from Peter Weller’s original character. He’s a more sensitive person before his transformation into a corporate plaything. Plus he still has a human hand. A bit more thought went into that than you’d expect.
In between my fruitless attempts to eke news about “The Killing: Season Four,” Joel Kinnaman talked enthusiastically about his new part, his love of the original film, the hesitation he had about the project before Jose Padilha came aboard, and his disbelief that I actually defend RoboCop 2. Yeah, I defend RoboCop 2. Wanna make something of it?
CraveOnline: Congratulations on this movie, man.
Joel Kinnaman: Thanks!
This must have been a really big deal, right?
Yeah, hell yeah.
Well guide me through it. Was it easy, or was it a rigorous audition, or were they just big fans of The Darkest Hour…?
[Laughs.]
I actually like that movie, by the way. I realize that sounds like a joke.
You do? You do?
I do.
No, it was… At first when I heard that they were remaking RoboCop, I was a big fan of the original and I just thought that I don’t think that’s a good fit for me and I’ll just watch it in the theaters later. My agents called and told me about it. Then they called me back and said, “Look, there’s this Brazilian director who’s doing this and he really wants to sit down with you,” and I was like, “Who’s that?” And they said it was José. And I was very familiar with José. I had seen his Bus 174 and I had seen both of his Elite Squad movies in the theaters, and in my opinion he was one of the most interesting directors in the world. I was so honored that he even knew who I was and that he wanted to sit down with me. I was thrilled about it.
And then it also completely changed the idea, because I felt that there was a lot of wrong ways that you could make a remake of RoboCop, but when it’s a director like that, he’s going to have a very strong idea. Since I knew his films, his films all have a very strong political and social commentary, the acting is superb, and he has a very – to my taste, at least – appealing visual style that’s both gritty and beautiful. So I wanted to sit down with him and talk about it, of course, and his vision, what story he wanted to tell using the concept of RoboCop. I thought it was brilliant.
What did he say at that meeting that sold you?
I don’t remember exactly what he said. He told me sort of the whole idea of the film. He told me what he wanted to tell about Alex, like what he was going through, that he’s suicidal, he becomes amputated from the throat down, he has to find the will to live because he just wants to die. And then he also told me his philosophical and political ideas that he wanted to infuse into this movie. So it was one of those rare opportunities where you get to meld both an exciting, big scale action movie but also talk about these interesting philosophical ideas.
