Perhaps it's a good thing that Neill Blomkamp is moving on to direct an Alien sequel because he's in serious need of a change of scenery. The South African director has been a champion when it comes to exploring society's ills by way of thought-provoking, visually intense genre films. It began with District 9 which earned him a Best Picture nomination, and followed with the big-budget, starry flick Elysium which failed to connect with audiences. Both took hard looks at the plight of the downtrodden by a wealthy, corrupt elite, and in many ways his new film Chappie does the same. That's not the problem, actually, as Blomkamp's social awareness is something to be valued. The problem with Chappie is that it feels pieced together using the nuts and bolts of Blomkamp's other films, and the pieces don't exactly fit as they should.
Blomkamp's vision of Johannesburg once again resembles something out of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, only now the streets are patrolled by robotic cop drones called Scouts, with human officers largely in a reserve role. The result is a drastic reduction in crime, a bunch of pissed off criminals and big money for the corporation that put the Scouts on the street. But that's not enough for computer whiz and Scout creator Deon (Dev Patel), who creates an artificial intelligence and illegally installs it in a broken down droid. This goes against the wishes of the company's CEO (Sigourney Weaver) and old school engineer Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), the latter having created a behemoth of a war machine called The Moose that he wants put into action. That won't happen as long as Deon's Scouts are around, so we know where his motivations lay. When he learns that Deon has created a Scout that can think and feel he's got a clear target to eliminate and a ton of firepower to do it.
Of course, nothing turns out to be so simple for anybody. Deon is kidnapped by a trio of thugs, including Ninja and Yolandi (from the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord), who want to see the Scouts deactivated so crime can commence as normal. But when they discover the Scout, they want it reprogrammed to be their sidekick on a major heist. Deon complies, but the robot, quickly named Chappie, turns out to be a total innocent. He needs to be raised and educated like a child, and the bulk of the story is how different parenting styles affect Chappie's outlook on the world. Yolandi, somewhat inexplicably, forms a maternal bond with Chappie almost immediately, while Ninja decides tough love is needed to turn him into a hardcore gangster.
While the nature vs. nurture debate burns as the engine of Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell screenplay, it's muddled by simple storytelling miscues and some dodgy performances. There are simply too many instances when characters make incredible leaps in logic that we're just expected to swallow. Ninja, who has taken a hardline approach to teaching Chappie, needs him for the heist but decides it's an even better idea to simply abandon the robot by the side of the road. Why? To teach him how hard the world really is...even though it could (and very nearly does) get Chappie destroyed. What? Never mind that they simply allow Deon, who they have abducted and threatened with death, to simply walk away because....er, that's not really explained. Probably because it can't be in a way that makes sense. Jackman's character is never really defined or particularly interesting; he seems to be there only because a bad guy is needed to justify the bullet-riddled and bloody finale, which of course looks tremendous. The decision to cast Die Antwoord in the film's biggest human roles is a questionable one. Ninja's O.G. routine is irritating from start to finish; they might as well have had Sacha Baron Cohen play Ali G instead. Yolandi fares better and hits on a few maternal beats that really click. She's clearly not a trained actress but her performance isn't as distracting as her cutely adorned array of booty shorts are. Jackman has little to do but snarl as the one-note villain, while Weaver barely ever gets out from behind a desk.
Visually there are few who can compete with Blomkamp, and Chappie is another exercise of incredible world-building prowess. The design of Chappie himself is also pretty brilliant, paying homage to the rabbit-eared design from anime classic, Appleseed. There's a humanity and childlike innocence to Chappie that we can thank the remarkable motion capture performance by Sharlto Copley for. Even when Chappie gets blinged out and starts talking like a gangster rapper we get that he's just undergoing a phase, just as children often do. One of the more intriguing aspects of the story is following the phases of Chappie's development. See if you can guess when he enters the rebellious teenage phase! Blomkamp seems to thrive when able to address real world concerns directly, which Chappie often does, but he struggles when trying to weave in traditional story elements. Chappie's sweet, borderline cloying coming-of-age story calls to mind everything from E.T. to Wall-E to Robocop, which is probably what Blomkamp was gunning for. We love to see humanity reflected back at us through the eyes of an innocent outsider. It's why Hollywood so often retells this kind of story, but we have to expect something more out of a visionary like Blomkamp and Chappie simply doesn't evolve into a superior model.
Rating: 3 out of 5
