Chappie

                                                                                                    "Watch out! He's as smart as a dunny rat."

Neill Blomkamp has made the same movie over and over again and Chappie, his latest, is an attempt at funneling all the working elements of his previous films into a singular effort. Chappie is set in near-future Johannesburg, whose police force has recently began to utilise a local weapons manufacturer's "Scout" droids which are designed by Deon Wilson (Dev Patel). When one Scout is decommissioned Deon decides to test his new artificial intelligence software on the bot but both are kidnapped by a gang comprising of America (Jose Pablo Cantillo) and fictionalised members of Die Antwoord, Yo-landi and Ninja. Together, they bring the titular character to life, a sentient robot, who's child-like nature results in it being manipulated by the gang, but who's weaponised being leads to it being a target.

Chappie shares much more with Blomkamp's former films than just cast and crew.  The location and some of the production design remains unchanged from District 9, Elysium, Halo:Landfall and Alive in Joburg, as do much of the photo-realistic special effects. Chappie shares aspects of it's beginning and ending with that of District 9, as both begin with documentary-style world building and end on a non-human character accepting his fate as a fugitive. There's also the morally bankrupt corporation (headed by a nearly absent Sigourney Weaver) which employs a dangerously unhinged military psychopath (Hugh Jackman) exactly as there was in both District 9 and Elysium (Jodie Foster and Sharlto Copely). Trent Opaloch returns as Director of Photography, and again uses combination of hand-held, helicopter documentary-style shots, gorgeous slow-motion photography and environments awash with browns and greys to marvelous effect, as he did on both District 9 and Elysium.

                                                "I'm as cross as a frog in a sock!"
 

Much like Luc Besson's Lucy from last year, Chappie is stupid sold as smart, Chappie doesn't go for too much pseudo-science but instead for a film that could discuss what life and consciousness truly mean, or make a point on human and robot-controlled police states, or crime and the criminal mind, it instead chooses to have a robot learn how to be a walk and talk like a gangster from Die Antwoord. There's no style, no depth, no dimension at all, it's all about appearance, the illusion of cool, painfully style over substance. Chappie goes from the birth of sentience to full-fledged gangster in mere days, and it's these moments that outweigh and out-shine the attempts at humanisation through Yo-landi and Deon. Chappie refers to Yo-landi, Ninja and Deon as Mother, Father and Maker, but Yo-landi has a child-like mind as well, Ninja is borderline sociopathic and overtly selfish, and Deon is largely absent and does little to earn his title of Maker over Chappie.

Blomkamp's approach to information dumping and exposition is as remarkable as it is often over-simplified. The film opens on a world-building documentary, Deon vaguely describes his actions and motives to a diary-cam but is open and direct in his actions to himself when alone, and Jackman is constantly having to read out what his computer screen says when the words are presented on camera. Visually, Blomkamp rarely wastes props and devices, things are clearly arranged and utilised and this is used most notably in the replacement of parts for Chappie itself. A damaged robot is brought to a mechanic who replaces it's damaged blue ear with an orange one, already establishing Chappie as separate before he is even birthed. Later Chappie loses his arm and it is replaced with a spare, though when he finally sees another scout, a test version with the same arm, he learns a lesson about his own life. It's the least flashy element of his directorial style but nontheless a consistent part of his process and one of the most effective elements in Chappie, and it actually shows Blomkamp is a better director than he is a co-writer.

The pitfall of Blomkamp's work begins and quite possibly ends with his writing, in recent weeks he's admitted as much. He co-wrote Chappie with his wife Terry Tatchell, and between Die Antwoord, Dev Patel and Hugh Jackman, the problems are grating and overt. Die Antwoord improvise to varied effect, Dev Patel is wooden and un-believable in his dialogue but is still a professional, and Hugh Jackman's appearance and dialogue are parodical, bringing an absurd humour into this depressing world. There are absurd character choices, confusing dialogue and under-developed characters aplenty, and it's shocking that several of these characters have already appeared in Blomkamp films in some form, as they are so poorly created. Chappie is the only real human element in the film, in terms of characterisation, movement and dialogue, obviously most of this is because of Copley. Much of Die Antwoord's dialogue is obviously improvisation and adaptation, and at times it's real and effective, but the famous aesthetic of "Zef" tends to take over the film world. It creates the appearance that Blomkamp has lost control and because the world and appearance of all the gangsters, not just Die Antwoord, is so bizarre and unexplored, the entire world comes off as mindless, stupid and child-like. Hippo, one of the principal villains played by Blomkamp regular Brandon Auret, sports a hairstyle that his prepubscent sister was apparently in charge of, and all of his dialogue is subtitled. Yo-landi is child-like in temperament, mental age and style, owning a bright pink Uzi, clothes with "Sex" and "Fuck" and cat heads emblazoned upon them, and a shockingly bizarre hairstyle. And Ninja is an idiot through and through. Mentality, motivation, design and acting, The man dominates the screen in the worst way possible. To reiterate, Jackman's Vincent Moore is a parodical character, whose mullet is often in close-up, whose dialogue would make Wolf Creek's Mick Taylor blush at the boganism of it, and whose outfit in the entire finale is head-to-toe khaki. Crikey, is it a performance worth watching.

Chappie is a mess, but gladly it as a character is as adorable, charming and naive as expected. Brought to life with marvelous CGI, performance and cinematography, but utterly wasted in writing and character direction, Chappie is surely Blomkamp's most complete work to date, too bad it's completely shit. Worth watching on a lazy night when you don't want to think.