Neill Blomkamp flew out the gates with a distinct style and
voice, mixing familiar sci-fi tropes with his brand of south-African cultural
specificity. His 2009 alien Apartheid
allegory “District 9” earned him an Oscar nomination for best picture, but
after his 2013 follow up “Elysium” failed to live up to the hype, people began
to wonder if he was the real-dea or just a lucky one-hit-wonder. Now, with
luke-warm response to his latest robo-Pinocchio story “Chappie,” Blomkamp’s
reputation continues to diminish, but while this film might not reach the
levels of intrigue and thoughtfulness as his politically taught first feature,
“Chappie” is still made with a tangible sense of energy and cinematic
curiosity.
In the near future the American government tests a fleet
robot police droids that are programmed to take down criminals within the slums
of Johannesburg Africa. The lead technician Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) wants to
advance this technology to the point where the robots can think, learn and feel
like a developing human being, but when the corporate buzzkills (Sigourney
Weaver) put the kibosh on his plans he is forced to test his theories alone in
his apartment. After successfully getting a test-droid to gain consciousness
with a toddler’s emotional capacity, Deon is high-jacked by a small gang of
city urchins who want to train the robot to help them with a heist. All the while,
a rival technician finds out about the rogue experiment and comes up with a
plan to sabotage Deon to replace the police droids with mind-controlled
military drones.
Like all of Blomkamp’s grungy science-fiction, there’s a
lot of ideas that he wants to investigate and most of them get sidelined by action
movie commitments that overwhelm the plot. When the gangsters (played by the
founding members of the South African electronic hip-hop group Die Antwoord)
kick out Patel’s character and begin to train the innocent Chappie themselves,
a new family structure is formed. Here it seems like the movie wants explore
how morals and the complexities of value-systems are shaped by an individual’s
cultural and economic circumstances. When the android figures out that his
internal battery is low and wonders why his creator would give him such a
limited life, the themes then begin to drift into more spiritual territories,
but both of these interesting ideas are nearly squashed by a shoot-em-up third
act that unfortunately rushes the film to a less than satisfying conclusion.
The Hugh Jackman subplot only serve as an engine for the
action set-pieces, and, while shot with convincing special effects and staged
with effective thrills, they derail the loftier aims of the narrative. More
problematic, Petal’s character is often sidelined to make room. Jackman plays an Aussie alfa-male with an un-ironic
mullet and Weaver seems to be more pant-suit than human, and both of them are
critically underdeveloped and unconvincingly motivated characters. Ninja and
Yolandi of Die Antwoord play heightened versions of their hip-hop personas, and
while they aren’t the best actors and their line-delivery sometimes falls flat,
their general eccentricity has an untrained, naive appeal that keeps their
scenes alive.
Despite a messy ending where all the stakes in the plot are
raised only to conclude in a deflating dues ex machine, I’m still willing to
give Blomkamp a pass for his ambition and his passion as a filmmaker. The robot
Chappie, voiced by actor Sharlto Copley, has a real arch as a special-effect
character, and like Andy Sirkis’ Caesar in the new “Planet of the Apes”
franchise, you believe in and relate to him on an emotional level. That goes a long way, and while I definitely see
the seams of the movie tearing around edges, I appreciate Blomkamp’s earnest
attempt to keep science-fiction weird and meaningful.
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2015
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