Chappie

By: Robert Murphy

It isn’t hard to believe when you think about the possibility of having robot beings walking around and helping you out in your day to day life, heck, take one look at Japan and you can almost see it happening sooner than you might think. So when you watch Chappie, a film set in the not to distant future, you sit there and wonder if this sort of future seems possible. In the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, humanoid machines called Scouts are a working part of the police force. A sleek and simple design coupled with durable armored bodies make them the perfect helping hand to the police and crime has severely gone down because of it. This is thanks to the weapons company Tetra Vaal and the creator of the Scouts, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), who is praised for his work but you can tell he isn’t extremely proud. Sure, he’s glad that his machines are success and that they’re helping people but he wants more for his machines than for them to be walking bullet magnets, even though he’s at a weapons company. This is exactly the line he gets from his boss, Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver), when he brings his program for an artificial intelligence to her, essentially making a robot that can think and feel. After he gets shot down though he secretly takes a Scout that was about to be destroyed to run the experiment anyways, a plan that is sure to go well.

Yes, Deon makes the classic smart persons mistake and goes a little too far too fast with his ideas and big ambitions. There is nothing wrong with trying to create something unique, something inspirational for the entire world but Deon lives in the cushiness and safer aspects of the world. He never stops to think what would happen after he turns the machine on and what if he got out and got away from Deon. The world isn’t so nice, as the movie points out quite clearly. The first few moments of the film, after the FOX news report opening, shows a group of criminals escaping from a deal gone bad, leading to a den full of thugs with automatic weapons. The group gets taken down by a swarm of officers and Scout robots which is done rather quickly and effectively too as you see why these robots are so praise worthy. The scene though introduces our criminals, Ninja and Yo-Landi (South African rap-rave group, Die Antwoord) along with their partner Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo) who are all now in big trouble with their boss for not only screwing up a drug deal but leading cops to their base probably doesn’t help things. They now owe him twenty million dollars and have one week to get it before they’re killed. This is when they hatch a scheme to get all the robots turned off and pulling a big job, this of course leads to Deon’s involvement since they figure, he made them and he can break them too.

This occurs right as Deon is hatching his own scheme to activate his robot by taking the junker model home with him. He gets kidnapped by this rag tag assortment of characters and when he can’t do what they ask they find out about his little secret and want him to activate the robot so it can help them with their scheme. This is the part I instantly enjoyed, when life springs into this blank slate of a robot (performed by Shartlo Copley) it is almost like every Disney movie rolled into one. Almost like watching Bambi’s first steps or the hunk of wood Pinocchio come to life, something to that affect. Chappie is essentially an infant when he is first starting out but an infant that will come to learn at an alarming rate. What he learns however, that is the problem. Chappie is given a combination of teachings, while Deon and the suddenly maternal Yo-Landi try to teach him about art, right from wrong and all that. Ninja wants him to pick up a gun and starting being a badass gangster and teaches him all the bad stuff. Admittedly, it is fun watching Ninja and Amerika try and teach Chappie how to car jack people and to walk with some swagger, almost puked while writing that but it was still pretty funny.

You do start to feel insanely bad for Chappie though who is sort of stuck in a dead beat dad scenario, watching the one scene where Ninja and Amerika leave him out in no mans land and make him find his own way home was the worst part. He gets beaten up, a molotov thrown at him and his arm cut off later by a jealous coworker of Deons. Chappie cries out for help and doesn’t know what is happening to him or why, he is a child and needs nurturing and it can hit you pretty hard as you watch.

No, I didn’t forget about Vincent (Hugh Jackman) but I might as well have as he is the one who maims poor Chappie as I just mentioned above. He plays former soldier turned engineer that hates the Scout robots because their success has cut back the release of his lumbering chicken legged robot. It looks like the ED-209 robots from Robocop if you’re wondering. His beef cake villain never inspires much love and is in fact a big negative for the story; he doesn’t come off as worried about what a robot that can think and feel can do as being a bad thing till near the end of the movie. The entirety of what he does beforehand is just arrogant self righteous nonsense, scenes where he does Hail Mary prayers and spouts semi-religious nonsense make it all even worse.

This does lead to the final showdown for Chappie though as Vincent gets the go ahead to use his prototype to hunt down Chappie and destroy him. It’s a large action scene like the beginning of the film but unlike the opening, this entire sequence felt very cliché. The scene doesn’t last too long but it does hit way too many bad notes for my liking, the slow motion sequence where Yo-Landi gets shot for instance. Also, the need for Vincent to try out all the little toys on his robot such as the pincer arm that cuts Amerika in half and the mortar shot function. It was making me wish the whole thing was cut even shorter or cut completely; it certainly didn’t make me love Vincent any more either.

Overall, Chappie is the only main attraction to Chappie in my opinion. Watching him learn, think and react to everything around him was just a joy and was the driving force behind my sticking around till the end. Ninja and Yo-Landi are not my type of characters to watch but they did serve their purpose as a decent foster family with Amerika being the odd uncle and creating the harder elements to the story. Everything else though just flops, I felt bad for Hugh Jackman who got stuck with such a horrible character that is no way likeable or interesting. Dev Patel doesn’t inspire much either because once he creates Chappie, he just feels like a useless character. Add some played out final action scenes on top of it all and you’re left with a crummy movie.

Good:

- Chappie was an all around funny and enjoyable character for me

- Not all the action scenes are bad; there are some enjoyable fast paced moments and scenes throughout Chappie

Bad:

- An overall weak story

- Jackman’s villain character was just terrible

- Played out final action scene

- Dev Patel’s lifeless “creator” role

Scully Rating: 2.0 out of 10