Chappie (2015) review

South African director Neill Blomkamp made quite a first impression with his feature-length directorial debut, 2009’s ‘District 9’. What was at first just a $30 million sci-fi film with a relatively unknown cast ended up becoming the ‘sleeper hit’ of that year, grossing over $200 million worldwide and earning four Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. This effectively made Blomkamp, who had previously been chosen by Peter Jackson to direct a ‘Halo’ film that sadly never came to fruition, one of the hottest new directors at the time. However his immediate follow-up, 2013’s ‘Elysium’, ended up being a bit of a disappointment for most point, to the point where even Blomkamp himself has recently admitted that he sort of ‘f****d it up’. Now he’s back with his third film, ‘Chappie’ which, like ‘District 9’, is inspired by one of Blomkamp’s previous short films, in this case 2003’s ‘Tetra Vaal’. But considering the current consensus towards this film (30% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time I’m writing this), it’s looking like some people are now going to wonder if Blomkamp was just a ‘one-hit wonder’ director. Well, after seeing the film I actually have to disagree with that notion. As someone who hasn’t yet seen ‘District 9’, I was mildly entertained by ‘Elysium’ despite the fact that there wasn’t much about it that really stood out. ‘Chappie’, on the other hand, is actually quite entertaining. It may have some flaws in regards to the story but surprisingly it was actually a really engaging sci-fi film. If anything, I think it’s better than ‘Elysium’.

In the year 2016, the government of South Africa deploys a series of semi-A.I. programmed attack robots to use as a police force in order to deal with the city of Johannesburg’s overly high crime rate. While the robots do prove to be a success, their creator Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), an employee at the weapons manufacturing company that builds them, creates a new A.I. program that is able to think and feel. Despite resistance from both his boss Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) and rival engineer Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), the latter of whom has developed a different robot design controlled by humans instead of A.I., Deon steals one of the police robots so that he could test out his new software. However, he is then almost immediately kidnapped by a group of gangsters, Ninja and Yolandi (played by Watkin Tudor Jones (‘Ninja’) and Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord), who want to use the robot to assist them in a heist so that they can pay off a debt to another gangster. Deon ends up installing his new program for them, resulting in a new A.I. system for the robot (portrayed through motion-capture by Sharlto Copley), who Yolandi names ‘Chappie’. As time goes on, Chappie does begin to develop human intelligence and emotions, all the while Ninja tries to toughen him up so that he can help them on their planned heist. But soon they all have to deal with the consequences that occur as a result of Deon’s actions against his company.

It’s clear that Blomkamp is a director that really does bring some unique concepts to his sci-fi films. In the case of ‘Chappie’, it’s all based around the idea of smart A.I. and the possibilities, good and bad, which can come from it. While it’s not really a social commentary like either ‘District 9’ or ‘Elysium’ were, it still offers an interesting take on this whole concept. Now with that said, the writing can be a bit of a mess at times, sometimes favoring action over story and character development. I mean at the end of the day, Chappie is really the only major character in this who gets any major development; everyone else is either flat or under-developed. However, I was actually surprised to find that I was really invested in the film. Both the visuals and the action sequences are pretty good and the film is backed by a really solid score from Hans Zimmer. Story-wise, despite the occasional shortcoming in regards to the writing, I still found the film to be very engaging, mainly because of the character of Chappie. I thought it was a pretty cool idea to have a more adult version of ‘Short Circuit’ but one where the main robot character actually learns about the world from bad influences while still maintaining a pretty likable persona that stems from his child-like innocence.

Clearly taking some inspiration from Andy Serkis, Sharlto Copley’s motion-capture work here as Chappie is quite phenomenal. Not only that, but he does a fantastic job in capturing Chappie’s initial innocence and naivety and then subsequent evolution into a ‘gangsta’. A key scene early on where Chappie gets into a troubling situation in a bad neighborhood actually resulted in me feeling legitimately sorry for him. As for the rest of the cast, while they don’t get as much to work with as Copley, a lot of them still do fine enough work here. Dev Patel is good in the role of Chappie’s ‘maker’ as is Hugh Jackman, as usual, even though his role as the film’s ‘villain’ is rather underdeveloped. As for Sigourney Weaver, she also does a good job though she really needs to find roles that don’t have her only appearing in a few scenes that results in her character contributing little to the actual plot, just like what happened last year with her role in ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’. Oh yeah, and Die Antwoord is also in this as well. Now I had never really known anything about them before seeing this movie and with that said, it is rather weird to be watching these two appear in this movie, in which they basically play themselves. Quite frankly it’s the strangest ‘cross-promotion’ I’ve ever seen. I won’t really say that their work in this is ‘good’, heck early on Ninja comes off as being a major a-hole (and I’ve heard that apparently he was a pain in the ass for Blomkamp to work with on set), but they do serviceable enough jobs here. Still, I think it would’ve been better to get other actors to play these roles.

I was legitimately surprised by how much I actually did like ‘Chappie’, especially given the fact that I’ve never seen ‘District 9’, admittedly wasn’t the biggest fan of ‘Elysium’, and went into this not knowing what to expect given the mediocre reviews it has been getting. But in the end, if anything, it seriously isn’t as bad as some people are putting it out to be. It’s clear that Blomkamp is a great visual director who does bring unique ideas to the films that he makes. Both of these qualities are definitely on display here. His only problem at the moment, though, is that he really does need to work on his writing because ‘Chappie’ does fall flat at times, mainly due to some lackluster character development for any character that is not named Chappie. But at the same time, Chappie is a fairly compelling main character and Sharlto Copley’s mo-cap performance here is superb. In short, the film was actually pretty dang entertaining and I did like it more than ‘Elysium’. I don’t believe that Blomkamp is a ‘one-hit wonder’ as I’m sure a lot of people will begin to think following this film (again, haven’t seen ‘District 9’). I’m excited to see what he brings to that ‘Alien’ film he’s working on next, which he got as a result of sharing some of the concept art he made for it. Heck, maybe now Sigourney Weaver can actually get a role where she’s not only in the film for a few scenes. Though as evident from his last two films, I think it’s safe to say that he should bring in another writer who can help him strengthen up his writing.

Rating: 4/5