CHAPPIE : Sunday 15th March 2015

It seems that critics and audiences are divided by Writer/Director Neill Blomkamp's latest Sci-Fi offering - 'CHAPPIE' which I saw over the weekend. Unlike Bloomkamp's second feature film 'Elysium' with Matt Damon and his now regular actor stablemate Sharlto Copley which was set in a mid-22nd Century dystopian Los Angeles, this film takes us back to a very near future Johannesburg which is where too his first feature 'District 9' was set. As the opening scenes unfold I was reminded of the 'Robocop' franchise, but Bloomkamp set up the premise very well with a raw grittiness of the South African city gripped by gangland violence, armed robbery, killings and societal decay. The droid police force are already established, albeit only recently in 2016 and very successful at what they do, but there is nothing shiny, bright and gleaming about these automated law enforcers - they are battered, dented, battle worn machines that are relentless in their task but occasionally break when overcome by RPG's, or renegade truck drivers. For me, the 'Robocop' connection ended there, and it was on with the story!

We are quickly introduced to weapons company 'Tetravaal' and it's MD Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) who have about 100 titanium plated police droids out on the streets of Johannesburg on active duty and bringing down the crime rate by the day. After a successful bust on a gangland hideaway in the opening scenes in which we are introduced to Ninja and Yolandi Visser (playing themselves of South African rap-rave outfit 'Die Antwoord') and gangster king-pin Hippo (Brandon Auret), 'Tetravaal' receive an order for another 100 police droids which draws attention from the worlds media and causes the company's stock value to skyrocket. All is good for the company and the inventor of the droids - engineer Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), who is also working on an artificial intelligence upgrade of the droids that could potentially give them thought, emotions, feelings and understanding.

Working within the same company but on another droid project is Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) who has developed a bigger badder bolder one droid army killing machine that is capable of much more wide spread death & destruction all in the name of national security and peace on the streets! Moore's machine though is controlled by a human and dependant on a human unlike Wilson's, and because of this the latter has taken all the funding while the former has to contend with budget cuts and sitting in the shadow of his successful colleague. Moore is an ex-soldier slab of beef cake who shoots first and asks questions later and just wants to blow shit up and get rich in teh process, and so there is an intense rivalry between the two, which will overflow into dire circumstances for them both ultimately.

When Wilson succeeds in developing his A.I. upgrade he implants this in Droid 22 which has been badly injured in the line of law enforcement and is due to be decommissioned beyond the state of repair. Before this can happen though Wilson is kidnapped by Ninja and Yolandi who have seven days in which to pay Hippo 20M Rand for a drug bust gone horribly wrong. When he awakes in some city fringe derelict warehouse building he is threatened with his life by Ninja and Yolandi if he doesn't 'switch off' the army of droids patrolling the streets, so that they can engineer a heist with a 600M Rand pay day, pay off Hippo and ride off into the sunset . . . if only it were that easy!

With the broken Droid 22 in the back of his company van, Wilson agrees to reassemble the droid and reprogramme it with his A.I. system that he has developed, so that the droid can assist with the heist. The droids incidentally, cannot be switched off - they have a rechargeable battery and can live forever almost, but this droids battery was fused to its body casing when an RPG was fired into its chest causing it too fuse together and therefore not be removable or rechargeable. This droid has a rapidly diminishing shelf-life!

In rebooting the droid and reassembling it, the droid is reborn and so has to learn to adapt to its surroundings, communicate and assimilate with those around it . . . like a baby does. Yolandi calls it a 'happy chappy' when they are first introduced because it is naive, cautious and unknowing, and so 'Chappie' (Sharlto Copley) comes into being. Chappie learns very quickly however, and learns too the ways of its gangster captives, and when Wilson is allowed to go but returns later on to teach Chappie the way of the world - for better purposes he hopes!

As the story unfolds we follow Chappie as his world expands and he learns very quickly with his new found intelligence. This is taken full advantage of by his captors who set him up as Gangster #1 and want to use him to pull of their daring heist. He calls Yolandi 'Mommy' and Ninja 'Daddy' because that's what he's been taught and Wilson is 'Maker', and he has loyalties to all three for very differing reasons and motivations. Yes, Chappie can now think for itself.

As we move along there are struggles at 'Tetravaal' between Wilson and Moore, the heist looms closer, Chappie is torn between Maker and Mommy & Daddy, and Moore engineers events to get his moment in the sun which hardly ends well for anyone. The closing however, presents an interesting premise about consciousness and the ultimate power of artificial intelligence. Whilst there are nods to 'Robocop', 'Terminator 2' and even 'Bicentennial Man' I enjoyed this film for its hard edged grittiness, the moral heart at the core of this story, and a new & different take on the subject matter which we have seen done before. Ninja & Yolandi are colourful low life gangster crims, and at times there are nods aplenty to their band 'Die Antwoord' including Ninja's heavily tattooed body and the logos they spray on Chappie.

This is certainly better that 'Elysium' and up there with 'District 9' and worth a look - not essential viewing on the big screen, but why wouldn't you for $20 to see Sharlto Copley doing his mo-cap robotic stuff to great effect, Jackman sporting a wicked mullet and Patel as the scientist engineer just wanting to make the world a better place. Good fun!

-Steve, at Odeon Online-