CHAPPiE, Review: Narcotics and Robotics

South Africa, Canada and the USA come together in this science fiction/crime/human machines saga. To reduce the high crime rate in Johannesburg, the South African police force purchases armour-plated attack robots (Robocops?) from weapons manufacturer Tetravaal (Neill Blomkamp's 2004 short film Tetra Vaal is the basis for this film--not the Transvaal--released 11 years later), which prove highly successful and the company gets repeat orders. The robot's inventor, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel, of Slumdog Millionaire fame, who might find his fame a few millions shorter after this outing) is praised for Tetravaal's success, while engineer Vincent Moore (High Jackman) grows jealous after funding is cut for his own giant attack robot, Moose, which, though capable of targeting even aeroplanes, is derided for its reliance on a human remote operator.

At his completely mechanised home, Deon creates a prototype artificial intelligence (A.I.) that mimics a human mind to the point of feeling emotions and having opinions, but Tetravaal CEO Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) denies him permission to test the A.I. on one of their own decommissioned robots. Undeterred, Deon steals the robot before it is destroyed, along with the guard key needed to update the robot's software. On his way home, he is kidnapped by a group of gangsters and narcotics smugglers, Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Vosser, of the hip-hop group Die Antwoord, screeching away to glory) and Yankie/Yankee/America (Jose Pablo Cantillo), who threaten to kill him unless he re-programmes the police robot to fight for them against their nemesis, Hippo (Brandon Auret), and name it "Chappie" (Sharlto Copley voice and motion capture), although Ninja often refers to him as Buddy.

Chappie is Blomkamp's third film as director. He wrote the screenplay, along with his wife Terri Tatchell, who also co-wrote District 9. Blomkamp also employed a robot with a similar design in his 2005 short-film Tempbot, about a ‘thinking and learning’ robot, which tries to assimilate into society. If the critical assessment of this film is anything to go by, robots should not try to assimilate into human society, humans should not try to humanise robots and robots should not try to robotise humans. In other words, if you have average intelligence (not artificial), you would do well to keep away from cinemas where this film is being shown.

Hamming of the highest order, Indian film (vintage Madras) sentimental overboard scripting and a colossal waste of resources. Yes, there is sentiment aplenty, but with all the drugs and tattoos and mayhem, what chance does it have? Are we in B&W 50s of digital, motion capture 2015? An ear-shattering and (countlessly) repetitive background music score adds to the torture. In a film that has an equal number of humans and machines (politically correct?), the best performances come from the robots, one toy chicken and the two real dogs, one dead, one alive. Mercifully, we do not have dog-eats-dog in this film, at least when it comes to the canine breed. And thankfully, neither the CEO nor any of the company staff is depicted as corrupt traitors out to sell their souls.

All the actors seem to have been attracted either by the lucre or the reputation of District 9. This one is District 1, to be generous. The idea is okay. ‘Autobiography of a Robot, as Narrated to ...,’ is nice stuff for a 10-15 page short-story, or a film of equal length, not a 120-minute film.

Yes old CHAP, this is one PiE where you don’t want a share.

Rating: *

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6bmTNadhJE