It’s difficult to feel anything but cynicism regarding Hollywood remakes.

Truly great movies don’t need to be reimagined in a modern context to be enjoyed. Honestly, most remakes are pretty blatant attempts to sucker nostalgic people out of their money without putting a great deal of effort toward making a decent movie.

That’s why the competence of the new “RoboCop” movie is genuinely surprising. The original is a beloved piece of late-80’s satire that takes on the privatization and militarization of the police force in a near-future version of Detroit. The trailers for the remake made it look like a generic action movie with none of the themes or charm of the original.

While it’s not as funny or special as the original, the “RoboCop” remake clearly has its heart in the right place, coming from people who have obvious reverence for the original.

As expected, it follows the same basic plot of the original, but with a couple of thematic tweaks to bring it up to speed with contemporary issues. An assassination attempt is made on Detroit police officer Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), which he just barely survives. Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), the CEO of a highly advanced robotics company that does contract work for the U.S. military, sees Murphy as the perfect candidate to mix man and machine. Sellars wants to give the American people someone to root for, as he hopes to sway public opinion enough to be allowed to use his lethal police robots in American cities. Thus, RoboCop is born.

Concerns over a highly militarized police force loom larger now than they did when the original film was released, so “RoboCop” manages to avoid feeling thematically outdated. The writers even sneak in some jabs at modern issues like America’s foreign drone policy and citizen surveillance.

Much of this is delivered through scenes from a fictional television show hosted by Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson), who is clearly a parody of Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly.

When “RoboCop” is in full satire mode, it’s pretty entertaining. When it’s more like a modern action movie, it’s competent, but not nearly as charming. While Kinnaman’s performance is, well, robotic, the supporting performances from Keaton, Jackson and Gary Oldman are all well done. It doesn’t feel like anyone is phoning it in for a paycheck, which is the best thing anyone could have asked for from this movie.

The “RoboCop” remake could never replace the original, but the good news is that the people who made it seem to know that. They took a premise that still has legs 27 years later and competently made it work with modern issues. Fans of the original will likely be surprised by how much they enjoy the remake.