Neil Blomkamp continues to present microcosmic depictions at life in South Africa with robotic style in his newest feature film Chappie.
The movie opens with news clips about a company called Tetravaal which has manufactured human-sized robots called ‘scouts’ for the Johannesburg police force. They’re tough and efficient, and function as weaponized soldiers or shields for human officers to walk behind into dangers situations. As a result crime has been drastically reduced and the city is safer than ever from crime. This is all thanks to the work of an engineer named Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) who has made the company look good for its president Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver). Meanwhile, another engineer named Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) is growing increasingly jealous since his giant mecha has been considered too powerful and dangerous for general use by the police and Ms. Bradley and his funding and help are reduced year after year.
In one such police action we’re introduced to a group of criminals named Ninja and Yo-Landi Wissel (of the rap group Die Antwoord who chose to use their real names here), and Yankie America (Jose Pablo Cantillo) who wind up owing a local warlord 20 million dollars . They fight their way out of a raid during which one of the scouts is damaged and made ready for scrap. The trio decides the only way they can get enough money to pay off their debt is to grab Wilson and force him to turn off all the scouts. Wilson meanwhile has made his own discovery in the computer field; by figuring out how to create a fully conscious A.I. Looking for a chance to give it life, he steals the body parts needy to make it functional right around the time the Ninja trio execute their plans…
As you may imagine a lot of wild elements go into the creation of our title character Chappie, who looks like a merging of mechanical characters in the anime Appleseed and Patlabor. What comes across though is the fact he is a child born fully articulated into a new world, initially with much fear as communicated by actor Sharlto Copley (District 9). The visual effects team painted the mechanics over Copley so the actor could move around to fully emulate and vocalize what Chappie feels throughout this film. It’s said children are a reflection of the society around them and this character tragically fulfills that paradigm to the fullest, sometimes with cuteness, others with a simple cruelty he cannot comprehend, all the while just wanting to understand everyone around him.
We watch Chappie assimilate every lesson taught to him, from how to make art, to how cool toys are, to the way he can “put people to sleep gently,” and realize in the long run this can only have a certain outcome in the long run. It’s both fun and sad to take in the whole time, even more so when one realizes he’s the most innocent protagonist of the whole film, yet we don’t get to meet him for quite some time. Between Wilson’s idealism combined with cowardice, Ninja team’ s criminality, and Moore’s NRA tempered jealousy, there’s a lot to wade until then.
Blomkamp has been adept at doing morally complex sci-fi films where characters aren’t entirely good guys (if at all). When he did Disctrict 9, he was a bit more competent with his writings than he was with Elysium. Here, he’s in the middle in terms of writing quality. A lot gets presented here in the screenplay by Blompkamp and his oft collaborator Terri Tatchel infuse various pieces of pop culture into this film from He-Man cartoons to Lobo’s’ Bite Me Fanboy’ jacket to gangsta type bling. There are times this movie will come to remind you greatly it’s financed by Sony, but it’s not entirely too distracting. The screenplay though could’ve used a bit of tweaking as a few scenes don’t quite have the impact they should but as a whole the movie is generally quite effective.
As a fan of American cinema and Japanese animation, I’ve become used to the sci-fi concepts utilized in this story, and wasn’t surprised by how the movie turned out. That’s not to say I didn’t like this movie at all. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed it. Will fans of more tradition drama / comedy genres enjoy this as much? I’m honestly not sure. There are some good story elements here and it’s funny at points. The movie was pretty solid but I’m not sure non sci-fi fans will get behind it. In listening to rumblings from last night’s screening, it sounded like various folks enjoyed themselves so this movie might have a chance of reaching out to everyone who sees it. I only know after watching Chappie, I’m still looking forward to whatever Neil Blomkamp might have in store for his next feature.
Grade: B
