Robot gangsta.
The H-Bomb: In the near future, crime in Johannesburg is so out of control that the streets have become too dangerous for human police officers. So, a private weapons company is contracted to design and manufacture robots for urban pacification. The first design, MOOSE, developed by ex-soldier-turned-engineer, Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), is a big, clunky, ugly ass monstrosity that resembles the ED-209 from RoboCop. Because it’s a big, clunky, ugly ass monstrosity, and requires a human to control it, it’s rejected. Instead, the police go with more humanoid droids designed by uber-dweeb, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel).
These police droids, who work in tandem with human cops, prove to be a smashing success, and the company orders the production of a hundred more units. Despite the positive reception for his creation, Deon is not satisfied, and continues to work towards the next step; creating a sentient artificial intelligence with a consciousness. Late one night, while working at home, Deon does just that, constructing A.I. software for a robot to learn and think on its own. It could even write its own poetry. Excitedly, he pitches the project to his boss, Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver), who laughs him out of her office, proclaiming that her company has no use for poetry writing robots.
Undeterred, Deon grabs a damaged police droid destined for the rubbish heap, in order to install the sentient A.I. inside of it. Before he can, however, he and his robot are jacked by human scuzz-bucket, Ninja (Ninja), his lady, Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser), and right-hand man, Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo), three criminals who owe a sizable debt to a local gangster. In order to pay off this debt, Ninja and his cohorts plan a high stakes heist, one that they will need a police robot they can control… like the one that Deon has with him.
Terrified for his own life, Deon installs the A.I. into the droid, and hightails it out of there, leaving the robot with the scummy criminals to do with as they please. Thusly, Chappie (Sharlto Copley) is born… literally, born, as in his mind is like an infant’s. Ninja and Yolandi now have the responsibility of “raising” Chappie, and getting him ready for the big heist they have planned. In order to do that, they’re going to have to toughen Chappie up, by taking him out into the real world, to show him how scary it can be… and to steal cars.
Chappie proves to be a quick learner, and becomes pretty adept at procuring vehicles for his “daddy.” However, he also starts to develop his conscience, and with it a sense of right and wrong…
South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp’s name has been in the news quite a bit lately, because he drew some Alien fan art pics that surfaced online. Then the news broke that Blomkamp is actually planning on making a new Alien film with Sigourney Weaver (and Michael Biehn, apparently… awesome). From there the Internet (or at least, the IMDb Discussion Boards) exploded with speculation over what this new Alien film will be.
At some point during all this Alien hoopla, someone remembered that Blomkamp actually has a new film coming out, Chappie, which as everyone and their mother has described, is essentially Short Circuit meets RoboCop. Blomkamp has shown with his two previous efforts, District 9 and Elysium, that he has a talent for making smart, gritty science fiction with socio-political subtext. The trailers certainly looked promising, yet Chappie has been received with surprisingly negative buzz. Even those who championed Elysium have come down pretty hard on it.
Having now seen Chappie for myself, I can say that while I did enjoy the film to an extent, I certainly understand why so many folks feel let down by it. Things get off to a very solid start, with Blomkamp once again depicting his hometown of Joburg as being a dingy, dangerous shithole of place, with bullets, blood, and grime flying in all directions. It’s a kick ass opening that promises a kick ass movie. Then the plot kicks in, and that’s where the trouble starts.
The entire second act, ya know, the bulk of the movie, has Chappie hanging around his “parents,” the scumbag Ninja, and his blonde, mutant-midget girlfriend, in the dreary abandoned factory they live in. For what feels like an eternity, we get little more than Ninja teaching Chappie how to shoot, how to walk and talk like a gangsta, how to steal cars, yada, yada. Occasionally, Deon pops in to check in on Chappie, and from time to time, we cut to the corporate office where Vincent tries to get his own ED-209 robot online.
Most of the time, though, it’s Chappie hanging around Ninja, who is obnoxious, unpleasant, and for the most part, comes off as a pathetic caricature of a gangsta. The guy just looks, and sounds, and acts fucking ridiculous, I’m sorry. The film’s midsection bogs down with Ninja’s bullshit and goes absolutely nowhere. This white boy rapper’s presence is overbearing as all hell, and really damages the movie overall. Yolondi fairs better as Chappie’s nurturing “mommy,” but that doesn’t change the fact that the second half of the film is just a grating, meandering bore.
Blomkamp recently stated that he felt his script for Elysium wasn’t quite as strong as it could have been. However, I feel that Elysium’s screenplay is far superior to the one for Chappie, which Blomkamp wrote with Terri Tatcher. As I mull it over in my head, I realize that this really could have used at least a couple of more rewrites, not only to work on that near fatal second act, but to flesh out the characters as well. Patel’s Deon is all noble and nothing else. Jackman’s villainous Vincent, sporting a God awful mullet, gets little to do except hide and spy on Deon, while Weaver’s CEO character is completely wasted, as she mainly sits in her office, barking orders and drinking scotch.
The only fleshed out characters on hand are Ninja and Yolondi (who in real life form the South African rap group Die Antwoord), and both are roundly unappealing. There is Chappie himself, who is well played by Copley in a motion capture performance, and we do care enough about him to root for him. He’s the most “human” character in the film, which I’m sure is intentional. There are stretches of the picture where nothing but bad things keep happening to him, to the point where the proceedings just become depressing. We have a potentially badass robot here, and all we see is him getting kicked around by street punks and sawed to pieces… that is, when he’s not painting pictures of cars, or making little Yolondi dolls.
Anyhow, Chappie does get back on track for its third act, and delivers a slam bang finale, as well as an emotionally satisfying ending that left a smile on my face. The explosive final third is packed with enough carnage and cinematic pyrotechnics to somewhat redeem the picture, but not entirely. There’s an intelligent, provocative idea at the core of Chappie, that could have made for a film as amazing as District 9. The potential was clearly there, it was simply squandered with a drab, tedious mid-section. It’s decent overall, but given what Blomkamp has delivered in the past, I expected more than decent.
