Chappie (2015) (English Language)

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Review

120min

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel…and more

Writers: Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell

‘District 9′ director Neil Blomkamp turns his hand to “Robot” Sci-fi and tackles the Artificial Intelligence (AI) sub-genre with the story of Chappie, a former South African police droid who ends up being re-programmed with consciousness by its creator and raised like a genius fast-learning child by his adoptive gangster parents, Chappie is torn between helping his “family” with their criminal endeavors and fulfilling the promise to his creator but when things take a disastrous turn he must fight for his life and all of those he has grown to love.

‘Chappie’ is a gritty Sci-fi set in the backdrop of a near-future crime-riddled Johannesburg and needless to say there is plenty of violent action to behold, the film certainly works as an all-action thriller but as all good Sci-fi it must do it strives to tackle more high-minded concepts about humanity and where we’re going.

Unfortunately this is where the movie trips up to an extent in trying to be many more things than it needs to be, the visual style which is impressive sometimes conspires with the pace of the film to look like an ultra-high budget ‘Die Antwoord’ video, but then as the tone changes and it deals with more profound concepts it does so in an over-simplistic and cavalier way.

No more evident is this than in the reduction of the complicated notion of “consciousness” to a computer .dat file and how that may be transferred to artificial creations, a legitimate theoretical concept named “mind uploading when technology reaches a certain stage in evolution.

With the actual casting of self-styled rap-rave duo ‘Die Antwoord’ as Chappie’s adoptive gangster parents Blomkamp takes a risk which he just about gets away with, although their performances are what you might expect from a pop group’s acting debut they fare no worse than the rest of the more established cast, indeed apart from long-time Blomkamp collaborator Sharlto Copley’s outstanding animated motion-caption turn as Chappie himself, none of the performances in the film are anything to shout about.

While not Neil Blomkamp’s best piece of work to date nor an instant Sci-fi classic, ‘Chappie’ is visually impressive and entertaining enough to be worth a viewing and not deserving of the early criticism it has received.

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