Chappie
2015
***½
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Ninja, Yolandi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman
After the excellent District 9 and the awful Elysium, Neill Blomkamp returns to form with another science fiction story set in Johannesburg. In the near future, robots known as Scouts enforce the law in the city. Their creator now hopes to test his next generation artificial intelligence in a scrapped Scout body, but he is kidnapped by a group of thugs who want something else. Chappie turns out to be like a human child: curious, susceptible to influence, and in want of love and care. Blomkamp's third feature is either wonderfully unpredictable or all over the place, I can't quite decide which. It starts off like RoboCop, as a grim depiction of a future where humanity fights crime with machines. The competing remotely controlled Moose robot even looks like ED-209 from Paul Verhoeven's classic. Once Chappie is activated, the film becomes a different beast, something that is closer to A.I., a moving story of an unorthodox family. Can people care about machines? Can machines care about people? Do we like these characters enough to care about the questions? Chappie is definitely a cute and funny character, but it's harder to relate to the people on screen.
