Chappie (2015) [Blu-ray]
Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline: I am discovery. I am wonder. I am chappie.

Every child comes into the world full of promise, and none more so than Chappie: he is gifted, special, a prodigy. Like any child, Chappie will come under the influence of his surroundings -- some good, some bad -- and he will rely on his heart and soul to find his way in the world and become his own man. But there's one thing that makes Chappie different from any one else: he is a robot. The first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself. That's a dangerous idea -- and it's a challenge that will pit Chappie against powerful, destructive forces that would ensure that he is the last of his kind.

Storyline: In the near future, Indian born Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), is a high ranking executive in a Robotic Police Force company. When he comes up with an idea to make a self conscious robot named Chappie to protect better, his higher-ups disapprove it. Nonetheless, he makes it and when the company finds out, scraps the robot. When 2 small time criminals planning a $200 million heist find Chappie, they kidnap Deon and force him to program Chappie to assist them in their heist. When power-corrupted military general Vincent (Hugh Jackman) finds out, he rallies all forces to stop Chappie, at any cost that leads to an monumental showdown between Good and Evil.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, May 29, 2015 -- Chappie isn't the first movie to explore artificial intelligence, the blurring of the line between what man makes and what makes a man, and it certainly won't be the last. The film, from Director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), navigates through fairly well-worn territory but efforts to spice up the story with a rather unique creation of a "gangster robot" that quickly evolves from a childlike state of curiosity, fear, and doubt to become not a killing machine but quite the opposite, a machine capable of understanding both the fragility of life and the lasting power of the human condition. The picture admirably aims to tackle deep philosophical issues through both broad stoke overtones and subtle nuance alike, and for the most part it succeeds. Even the unorthodox lead character and the environment in which it finds itself is a great asset considering the almost immediate juxtaposition it faces in its existence, one that places it squarely in the middle of the best and worst man has to offer: tenderness, compassion, and a willingness to help and create and preserve on one side and man's destructive nature and greed on the other. While the movie doesn't really break any new philosophical ground, it explores timely questions and does so in trademark Blomkamp style that blends creative technical genius with epic action and intimate passion.

Johannesburg has become a dangerous city. Crime is on the rise and police are dying in record numbers. The city is combating the dangers with a new army of robotic police officers purchased from a corporation called "Tetravaal." The humanoid bots are programed to strike hard and protect human officers at all costs. They're the brain child of a brilliant designer named Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) whose ultimate goal is to create a fully realized and feeling robot. The company is also supporting development of a larger, more aggressive remotely controlled fighting machine known as "Moose," created by an ex-soldier named Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman). One of Wilson's robots is destroyed in a shootout with a gang. When several criminals -- Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Yoldani Visser), and Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo) -- fall prey to a dangerous criminal (Brandon Auret) who demands they pay him $20,000,000, they hatch a desperate plan to kidnap Wilson and take control of the robots to do their dirty work. But the kidnapping goes better than expected. Wilson is nabbed with the destroyed robot in his possession. He makes the necessary repairs and uploads a program that will empower it with self awareness. But a damaged battery gives it only days of functionality. Yolandi takes it under her wing and calls it "Chappie." The robot slowly learns what it means to be alive and is tricked into aiding the criminals get their money with a promise of an extended existence.

Of all of the "man vs. machine, man as machine, machine as man" movies out there, Chappie most closely resembles RoboCop, and the similarities are often uncanny. Certainly the pictures deal in similar themes as they relate to the essence of man carrying over from the organic to the inorganic, that the essence of an individual exists beyond the physical body as something less tangible and more metaphysical. In RoboCop that was memory. In Chappie it's consciousness, in other words a sense of self and self-awareness that one exists, that one is made of experiences and the accumulated influences of other people, be those influences crudely programed in by code, shared in a warm embrace, or, on the other extreme, learned the hard way in a trial by fire in the real world. Chappie explores all of those arenas during its "second" life as a more self-aware machine, beginning as if an infant and maturing through the process to wrestle with deeper philosophies that center around both the tangible and abstract concepts of life alike.

It's here where the movie's greatest strengths lie, and it's also here where it's greatest weaknesses may be found. There's nothing evolutionary about the way Chappie tackles the questions its raises. The movie efforts, nobly, to blend deep psychological, philosophical, and metaphysical concepts with rough-and-tumble action (that's nowhere near as blood-soaked as Blomkamp's other films but no less effective as pure entertainment) but always feels like it's favoring style over substance, even as the movie at least makes sense of Chappie's evolution from curious child to bling-bling gangster to more deeply aware individual. But the film uses that avenue to its benefit, building in Chappie the classic outsider who wants to be wanted, to feel needed, to do whatever is necessary to fit in. There's character growth on both sides of that equation but that naiveté that drives Chappie helps to reinforce complicated concepts in, oftentimes, the simplest terms possible. Even still, and for as well as the movie handles all of its baseline requirements and tries its hardest to keep it all fresh, there's a certain hollowness to it, a feeling that it only scratches the surface and repeats what others have done before rather than try and forge a new path with new ideas and revolutionary visions about what it means to be alive in the digital and mechanical world.

Chappie also resembles RoboCop in the broader arena of general ideas and exterior plot elements. Both movies center around a crime infested city that's taken to drastic measures to solve the problem, bringing robotic policing into the picture to support, and perhaps even eventually replace, human beings. There are two models, the more human-shpaed entity from which Chappie originates and the larger, more menacing, more mechanical "Moose" that's not a dead ringer for ED-209 but the resemblance is unmissable, both in look and context. There's a slight reversal here whereby Chappie evolves into something resembling a human whereas in RoboCop the title character reverts back to Alex Murphy. There's the large corporate entity behind it all and even the abandoned, deteriorating setting where much of the raw thematic conceptualization and development takes place. It's disappointing to see Blomkamp's film borrow so heavily, and between these outward similarities and the more critical thematic details that regurgitate many of the same ideas found in other films (not only RoboCop but any number of other movies), Chappie must get all of the peripherals right to really work.

Fortunately, Blomkamp is a director of such skill that he's able to not necessarily hide the absence of creativity but instead elevate the broader film -- the support pieces that hold it together -- to a higher level. The movie is expectedly slick and seamless, boasting digital effects of the highest order that are integrated so perfectly into the film that it's practically impossible to separate reality and digital. Blomkamp regular Sharlto Copley provides voice and motion capture for Chappie and the result is one of the most seamlessly presented, fully alive, and breathtakingly real digital characters ever seen in a movie. The digital designers have nailed the shell down to to the finest little touches that are always a welcome addition to Blomkamp's movies, but it's Copley who builds the character to a level quite unlike any digital creation before, finding the perfect childlike beginnings of fear and curiosity, constructing an evolving center, and building towards a fully realized individual character with something as close to an essence, or consciousness as the movie presents it, as the current state of the technology allows and to the extent that the narrative demands. Copley is surrounded by several strong performances, particularly from Dev Patel as the brilliant designer and Yolandi Visser as the de facto mother figure. Blomkamp also incorporates several richly realized action scenes that are broadly reflective of the style seen in his previous films, action scenes that perfectly serve the greater narrative while also standing apart as purely entertaining shoot-em-up segments.

Chappie, from a purely conceptual standpoint, feels reflective of many similar characters and stories, from The Tin Man to A.I. From that perspective, it's hardly fresh, but Blomkamp, with his trademark style of sophisticated and seamless visual effects, terrific action, and well-rounded characters, makes the movie better than it should be considering a center that rings rather hollow and trite. Audiences looking for a revelatory experience won't find it here, but all of the movie's support pieces -- performances, action, visual effects -- keep it working and yield a largely entertaining ride. Sony's Blu-ray release is excellent all around. Top-end video and audio are the headlines, and a nice grouping of extras are included. Recommended.

[CSW] -1.3- First of all and most importantly, they misspelled the name. The H in CHAPPIE should have been an R. This film is brutal to sit through. Don't do it. Anyone who liked this probably enjoys sitting in traffic too. A cross between juvenile gangster hip-hop and a story fit for 8-year olds while, at the same time, laced with F-bombs and violence. I found it impossible to guess who the target audience was. If you're old enough to see an R-rated movie, then one would have no idea how you could tolerate the kiddieness of the flick. In general, the movie started off intriguing and got stupider by the minute. The thugs were morons. The alleged genius that developed the AI was a moron. Even Hugh Jackman's character was a moron. It really is a stupid movie.
[V5.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now (but it won't save this film).


º º