Disc Reviews

Chappie Blu-ray Review

7th Jul 2015

Robotics reaches a new breakthrough thanks to tech-wiz Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) who has designed a new walking and talking robotic peacekeeper to aid in crime prevention. But his recent development plans to introduce sentient thinking AI into the robotics is vetoed by his boss (Sigourney Weaver) but lusted after by his co-worker (Hugh Jackman) for his own rejected peacekeeping programme.

A local street gang (as played by leading members of SA band Die Antwoord) get the idea of kidnapping Deon in order to get him to create a robot drone that will take orders from them. This is at the same time that Deon decides to steal a few spare parts and to test his new AI on his own turf outside of the business. So instead he ends up testing it for his new gun-toting friends and so Chappie is born.

Initially a baby-mind that needs to be taught and nourished like any other child, Chappie is mismanaged by his new “parents” as they are themselves on a timetable to commit certain crimes to obtain a certain amount of cash.

What we get then is kind of a fucked up version of Short Circuit by way of Robocop 2 and “Pick any street level gang warfare movie”.

Patel, Jackman and Weaver are off screen for far too long leaving them with less of an impact on the film. Patel in particular seems like he should be much more involved with the onscreen antics and development of Chappie.

This then means we are left with his lower level parents, the male dog of which you spend time wishing than someone would put him out of your misery. This does not happen.

Sure the violent effect he has on Chappie makes you care for the robot newbie, but eventually you are more disgusted by the influence he has on Chappie’s own actions. Commentary on bad and downright evil parenting for sure, but when half of it seems like it is being played for laughs it becomes quite worrisome.

Neill Blomkamp started strong with District 9, but it has been diminished returns after Elysium and now a very confused Chappie.

Still stuck in the squaller of South Africa – Blomkamp is insistent on hammering the same points home about this area of the world and how society has bred itself into a mess.– But this time round his so called heroes we follow don’t actually have anything worthy to say about themselves. In fact they only seem to be heroes because the people after them are that much worse than they are. It was a crucial error in the films script and performances to cast such an unsympathetic tone on these characters as they sometimes make the film unbearable to watch. It’s a brave move from Blomkamp to have the characters perhaps more realistic to real life than you normally may expect, but perhaps more of a proving ground of how to alienate your audience before you have had a chance to educate them.

The motion capture work by Sharlto Copley is astounding. The characterisation (considering what he has for friends) is perhaps as solid as you’d expect. But he is a confused bastard baby that has been manipulated out of control and isn’t aware of the wrong he is doing.

The problem is that he has a growing AI that at some point stops growing. He reaches a sort of teenage adolescence and then doesn’t learn much for himself beyond this. A robot AI eager for information would continue to educate itself, as opoosed to a human child who can grow bored of this and be talked out of education.

An extreme example of how daft this gets – for some reason Chappie seems to believe that Ninja Stars send people to sleep. Logic dictates that Chappie would eventually figure out that this is a ridiculous thought and that throwing such a sharp object would create severe tissue damage. This level of naivety loses a lot of sympathy you might have for Chappie

The Blu-ray homes loaded with lots of production extras that go into the look and execution of the film and there is also some deleted material on here as well.

Such a shame that the film misfires so badly – but you can still tell that there is a visionary director at work here, so Blomkamp’s career is far from over. But he’s certainly under watch now and perhaps expected to deliver the goods on his next film.