Chappie
Director: Neil Blomkamp
(In Theaters)
C
Never before have I personally invested so much faith into a director as Neill Blomkamp. District 9 introduced an ambitious guerilla of a director with a keen sense of local color and regional awareness. So much so, in fact, that the aforementioned alien drama became a pivotal sci-fi flick in its own right, nicking away at the seams that separate cinematic realism and fantasy. Elysium fell short of the established precedent, but the discrepancy was not cataclysmic, cited as more of an experiment as to how Blomkamp may access a more substantial budget. Unfortunately, ferreting an excuse for the young filmmaker’s latest piece, Chappie, is far more difficult.
Deon (Dev Patel), a recently-successful robotic engineer working for Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver), basks in the grandeur of his automated police force, a technology that reduced the casualties of war in a fictionalized Johannesburg inching closer and closer toward dystopia. The success staves neither Deon’s hunger for innovation nor his fellow designer’s (Hugh Jackman) jealousy, as the craftsman finishes the prototype of an A.I. capable of adaptation greater than that of a human. In the midst of a rush to install the program onto a condemned police droid, Deon is robbed by Die Antwoord, a real-life South African hip-hop act portraying themselves, thus losing uninhibited control over Chappie (Sharlto Copley). Die Antwoord’s Ninja, desperate to use the android as a forceful ATM, resists the maker’s will to be with his machine, and a literal battle of nurture versus nature emerges. Additionally, the subjects of militarization, adoption of violence and preservation of culture carry a thick presence.
The film isn’t particularly terrible, and it does well to instigate discussion farther than the car ride home. However, Chappie doesn’t seem to handle its primary theme particularly well. The animated automaton, a trope recognizable from Pinocchio to the Ovidian Pygmalion, still has plenty of philosophical and narrative meat on its bones, as Spike Jonze’s Her contended last year. Despite this, the film fails to compound upon the concept in much of any effective manner, save the film’s final, partially redeeming movement.
Aesthetically, Blomkamp preserves the gritty, urbanized feel that awarded District 9 its staying power. A clean and geometrically sound cityscape clashes against the abandoned and decayed storage facilities in which Ninja and Yolandi dwell. Despite funds 1/3 of the size of films like Jupiter Ascending, Blomkamp’s digitized set pieces mesh better with their surroundings than the vast majority of the sci-fi that spawns from Hollywood.
The cast generally lacks exception, and the inclusion of Die Antwoord, though not entirely abrupt, seemed to contort and limit Chappie‘s narrative. Being two of the largest icons to recently emerge from South Africa, former couple Anri du Toit (Yolandi) and Watkin Tudor Jones (Ninja) aid heavily in providing a modern, cultural flair to the film, specifically in terms of style and vernacular. However, the hyperbole of a lifestyle the film versions of the duo convey does more to trivialize the sporadic waves of violence and trafficking that can plague Johannesburg. Fortunately, Copley’s Chappie is a delight to witness, and the overall quality of the actor’s performance comes close to the work of Andy Serkis, an individual known for his apt motion capture.
Perhaps needless to say, Chappie isn’t running short on ambition. However, in the pursuit of so many equally pressing matters, the lens distorts, making it difficult to discern what the filmmaker values. Chappie, though not inherently terrible, is a far cry from the classic it should have been.
