CHAPPIE : Reviews

[jo]

www.idigitaltimes.com/chappie-movie-review-world-robot-apocalypse-movies-blokamp-provides-other-side-coin-417988

Fri, 02/27/2015 - 08:25

Movies

Chappie Movie Review: In A World Of Robot Apocalypse Movies, Blokamp Provides The Other Side Of The Coin [SPOILERS]

By Xavier Harding


Neill Blomkamp's Chappie is a movie about robots and artificial intelligence. Hearing that probably evokes countless tales of human-looking, sentient computers running through the streets and ending mankind as we know it. Some movies show robots and AI in a good light, but they're usually limited -- Christoper Nolan's Interstellar showed Tars save a life in one scene, but usually wasn't much more than a really smart, mobile Siri. And then there are robots like Chappie. Who -- while at first was essentially a baby -- learned and evolved to take the human race to new heights.



This is the story of Chappie. Major spoilers ahead.


The movie may be about Chappie, but it equally revolves around Dev Patel's character Deon. The young programmer is the brains behind the metallic brawn that is Johannesburg's robot police force. He has big plans for the 'bots that go far beyond law enforcement but he isn't the only ambitious character in the movie. The police force's Vincent Moore, played by Hugh Jackman, is revealed to be equally anxious to push his own agenda. But more on that later.


Chappie's initial antagonists to Dev Patel's well-meaning Deon is Ninja, Yo-Landi and America -- the former two being part of the rap group Die Antwoord. Even though initially the crew are frustrated by Chappie's child-like level of intellect, they soon teach the robot how to steal -- much to Deon's chagrin.


Chappie spends most of the movie as the robot equivalent of an impressionable youth. Ninja gets in some gunplay and tough-guy phrases while Deon focuses on the arts and morals. Ninja sways Chappie to steal cars and intimidate, but it's Dev Patel's words that stop him from committing the big heist. Despite Die-Antwoord's best efforts at being bad, Blomkamp still finds a way for the audience to root for them in the end.


But enough summary. If you’re reading this Chappie review you’ve probably seen the movie. You know that Dev Patel, whether at work or not, consistently cannot catch a break. You know that Sharlto Copley does great voice work here as Deon’s learning robot. And you also know that, despite Sigourney Weaver’s best efforts as police chief to maintain some type of reasonable order, couldn’t help but authorize Jackman’s Moose: a giant human-controlled robot that just screams “final boss of this movie.” In fact, most of the movie’s end-fight feels like a video game.



Which could have been on purpose. Product placement doesn’t really surprise us anymore, but the overabundance of it certainly took us out of the film. Between the sheer amount of PS4’s present in the film to the numerous Vaio laptops present which aren’t even a thing anymore, we fully expected a splash screen of the Sony logo to appear after specific scenes. Jackman’s character even remotely controls the Moose with a wearable device that looks all too similar to Project Morpheus. The perfect device to to win you the fight in Call Of Duty: Chappie Warfare.



When all is said and done, Chappie is a movie that shows how robots can enhance the human life instead of tearing it down. It takes a while to get there, but it gets there. With the setting of Johannesburg and the inclusion of Die Antwoord, Blomkamp does a great job of immersing the viewer in South Africa, much like his previous District 9. Even if the majority of people in Chappie with any color to their skin were looters or gang-youths. Though, admittedly, this gets away from the point of the film. Because Chappie’s discoveries affects not just one race but the human race. Hollywood’s recurring theme of the robot apocalypse could one day come to fruition. But in a world where we continue to go seek out and develop smarter AI, it’s good to know that’s not our only option.

[Jamie]

This review pretty well says Hugh is nothing more than an over amped gamer. Hope he gets more and better mentions from future critics.

[jo]

Jamie,

There was a review from a Portuguese blogger that was linked on IMDB. It was in Portuguese but the link he provides is in English. In his review, he basically focused on the Chappie creation and some implications on artificial intelligence. He rates the movie 7 out of 10.


stufftal.blogspot.com/2015/02/chappie-review-neill-blomkamp-hugh-jackman-sigourney-weaver-sharlto-copley.html

Neill Blomkamp shows us what will become of humanity in the near future, in another fantastic science fiction film that does not have that much fiction.

Neill Blomkamp is one of the best science fiction filmmakers today. Not only by the fantastic arguments or his way to direct them, but mainly because of his ability to create characters with personality, something that this genre needs. Typically, these films concentrate too much on the world in which they occurred and who belong in it is left a little aside, but Blomkamp knows that what sets this world are those who belong to it and shape it, and so presents it through what the characters go through are in your hands. If we look at the protagonist of the film, Chappie is shaped by the society in which he operates, hencing the unquestionable importance of the set, but he if was not properly exploited, what he does to stir what surrounds him would not cause the wanted impact because the public would already be turned off completely from the character.

Chappie tells the story of the first robot able to think and feel like a human being. This film calls into question the future of technology as well as humanity's, showing us the connection between the two which is becoming stronger. In this new Blomkamp project, we are shown a narrative in which this technology will end up on what can be considered the wrong hands. But defining a small group as being a bad influence on this new ... Creature? Being? Call it as you wish. For this new being, only Chappie not only suffers from bad treatment from those closer to him, but also from a varied number of humans to which he has not done any harm. There is no telling what create artificial intelligence may cause, however there is an element that cannot change, we. We are not prepared to create a new species, because we still cannot understand how we function. If our species endured for so long was because there was already a working order in nature, to which we have adapted and we used to get where we needed. However, we took that organism and give it the turns that we felt necessary to create the confusion we call society. With so many laps, things no longer have an order and can now take the direction that the strongest want. Already there is no way to define right from wrong, and if so, how can we expect an intelligent robot to adapt to such a dysfunctional environment? It would not work. We are still far from being a fully functional organism, but the technology that can threaten us is frighteningly close and does not seem to go wait for us.

The film deals with big philosophical questions. Does Chappie, despite having a conscience, can be considered a living thing? A person? After all, it was created by a normal man, is not composed of cells, and if they want to take this to a more religious side, there was also no higher power was involved in its creation. Chappie is just a super intelligent computer, able to think and feel like us. Does it make a difference? With the hypothesis that the film presents us, to copy the human brain into a machine, which Transdence did poorly last year, what becomes of the boundary between life and death? It will be the operability of our body? Or simply the disappearance of our consciousness? These are difficult questions, but given the effort that is being done to achieve this goal, we may not have much more time to reflect on them. Blomkamp positions this story at the right time to grab our attention. It does not unfold in twenty or ten years from now. The action of the film takes place in 2016, which makes us soon feel closer to all that unfolds. It is true that some of this technology will only be actually operating in fifteen to thirty years, but this proximity creates certain urgency on these issues, which very soon will be discussed by all the media. Here is only a suggestion to have something to think about.

Chappie is definitely a movie that will impose a series of existential questions, but it is still a beautiful piece of entertainment. However, do not be waiting for a new District 9 because the film does not even come close. The argument is interesting, appealing, the narrative is built and Chappie is the most charismatic robot in recent times. But seeing him being taken the wrong way throughout the film, the way he suffers and is treated, hurts and it may not leave the audience very comfortable with what it is watching. However, the involvement of Blomkamp in the film already makes it worth to be seen because we know that overall it is a movie with structure that will entertain us in its two hours. The action scenes could be a little more worked out, it is far from being the best that the film has to offer, but they also do not play a big role in the narrative, so is becomes up to each one us if we like the lack of action or not. What makes all the difference in the film is Hans Zimmer's soundtrack which marks its presence since the beginning of the film. It exacerbates every moment, evidences what the characters are feeling and increases the impact of each of the scenes.

The cast did a good job, but whenever Chappie appeared, the screen was all his. The protagonist of the film is played by Sharlto Copley, who gave him life through motion capture. And we get again into a contentious issue, perhaps not as much as the previous ones, but that in a way is part of a very heated discussion. Chappie was very well presented in the film, and to see him is a real treat, however we cannot give all the credit to Copley because much of the work was done by technicians, Copley only provided them with the body language of the character. In this regard we can say that the actor did a fantastic job in adapting human mannerisms to the robot's physiology. But at the end of the day, the ones who deserve all the accolades are the elements of the technical team that helped bringing this character to the big screen.

It's a bit early to predict any impression Chappie can leave in its genre, however, Blomkamp manages to create once again an engaging narrative with characters that will captivate and inspire us.


The best: Chappie.
The worst: We see the innocent being diverted by the dark side of society.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 7/10

I asked him if he had any comments on the acting of the major actors ( Jackman, Weaver, and Patel). Here was his reply --

Their acting was good, but their roles weren't very challenging. Weaver has a very small role, Jackman is simply that guy in the office that no one likes, and Patel is just the guy who created Chappie. They are very well written, but I didn't care that much for, I cared for the main character.

I think this movie has a cult appeal to adult sci-fi fans and to fans of Neill Blomkamp himself ( because of his first film District 9). I think the reason for the heavy promotion is to widen the appeal and broaden the audience demographics. And Hugh is such an excellent choice -- as an actor in an unusual role that will increase the appeal of the movie as well as to help draw people in through the publicity campaign.

Be that as it may --

Hugh plays the antagonist but based on how he is billed "And HJ...", I assume it is no more than an interesting featured role. I think he was asked to pitch in heavily for the promotion because of his reputation in action movies. I am not expecting a long screen time for the character he plays. Unlike in PAN, where his character Blackbeard is a MAIN character.

He may have taken the role, after the protracted period when he had to work on three intense portrayals ( Les Miserables, The Wolverine, Prisoners), and followed by Days of Future Past, as part of his rest period following that time ( and he did take his family along to SA) as well as after he had his first of three cancer surgical procedures. I don't remember that he spent a long time filming his part in CHAPPIE.  And maybe be wants to try a villain part once in a while

My interest in the movie is because I am looking forward to another kind of portrayal from him...and to a bit of interest on the issue of artificial intelligence


Jo

[jo]

From another technology-oriented site -- 3 out of 4 rating.

tech-ticker.com/chappie-2015/

You are here:Home
/ Movies Reviews
/ Chappie [2015] Review

By Anis Tabet / March 1, 2015 /



Chappie poster IMDB Rating: N/A/10 (N/A votes)
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel
Runtime: 120 min
Rated: R
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Released: 06 Mar 2015


Plot: In the near future, crime is patrolled by an oppressive mechanized police force. But now, the people are fighting back. When one police droid, Chappie, is stolen and given new programming, he becomes the first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself. As powerful, destructive forces start to see Chappie as a danger to mankind and order, they will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo and ensure that Chappie is the last of his kind.


From the poster and trailer you might think is another “Transformers” movie (God forbid), when in fact, “Chappie” is a Sci-Fi movie from Neill Blomkamp, the man who gave us the superior “District 9″ and “Elysium”. Despite a lack of stars or a recognizable filmmaker, “District 9″ put many big budget Hollywood blockbusters to shame and established Blomkamp as a writer-director of talent and substance.

His new film is nowhere near as good as his first feature; it’s formulaic and unashamedly manipulative, but it’s played with sincerity…and it works. The time is the near future and crime is being handled by an oppressive mechanized police force created by a young programmer called Deon (Dev Patel from “Slumdog Millionaire”). When one police droid, Chappie, is stolen by a gang of thieves and given new programming, he becomes the first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself (how cool is that?). I will not reveal more. But I will say that under Blomkamp’s direction, the story never misses a beat, with fully-committed performances by Patel, Sigourney Weaver, Sharlto Copley (as Chappie), and Hugh Jackman as a man with his own personal agenda. But if this movie succeeds, it’s mainly because of the human element. And if you’re a sucker for Blomkamp’s style and techniques, I have a feeling that you’ll willingly surrender to “Chappie”. It’s not the most original Sci-Fi movie that you’ll ever see, but it is fun to watch, and that’s a particular compliment at this point in the movie season.

Next up, Blomkamp will take over the Alien franchise with a movie set for a 2017 release. I, for one, cannot wait.

Rating: 3/4

[jo]

www.wired.com/2015/03/chappie-philosophy/

Eric Thurm Entertainment

03.04.15
9:00 am


Chappie Is Loud, Messy, and Surprisingly Radical


Chappie is a movie that somehow blends Bicentennial Man with Pacific Rim. It’s a big-budget science fiction movie with one of the best ever CG-capture performances not by Andy Serkis. It features Sigourney Weaver as a glorified window dressing executive, Hugh Jackman wearing a mullet and his shirt tucked into khaki shorts, and South African hip-hop group Die Antwoord playing loosely fictionalized gun-loving versions of themselves. It has a giant robot fight and completely earnest scenes of an engineer trying to teach a robot to paint. The fact that it exists at all is something of a miracle. And the only person who could have made it is Neill Blomkamp.

Blomkamp is one of the most distinctive science fiction directors of the modern era. Watching his first film, District 9, it’s easy to see why—a saga of aliens roped into a ghetto in Blomkamp’s hometown of Johannesburg, it’s one of the most acclaimed genre films of the last few years, mixing well-designed aliens and ripping action with a surprisingly potent apartheid allegory. Elysium, Blomkamp’s second outing, suffered from the same overindulgence as the later work of his mentor, Peter Jackson. But now he’s got some breathing room: not only is Chappie as close to a personal vision as it is possible for a big-budget movie about CG robots to be, it’s also (with the exception of Johnny Depp’s execrable Transcendence) one of the most radical pop culture representations of mind-body dualism in years.




At this point, the movie’s off-the-wall trailer is so familiar that you might be able to write out the movie’s beats from memory: a broken police droid is given sentience by a scientist with a conscience (Dev Patel), then learns to think (in true Iron Giant fashion, Chappie also acts like an adorable child in an Oscar-bait movie). Also, stuff blows up. But for a filmmaker who tends to be primarily excited by explosions—his love of Michael Bay is well-chronicled—Blomkamp seems to have done some serious thinking about the nature of consciousness. Much of that is visible in Chappie’s third act, which essentially (in the interest of keeping things spoiler-free) attributes sentience to a vague “energy” that turns out to be remarkably easy to move around.

This seemingly simple, largely intractable philosophical problem—are “we” something separate from flesh? Are our “selves” different from our brains?— dates all the way back to Plato (whose Phaedrus is an extended argument for the immortality of the soul), but it finds its most common form in the work of Rene Descartes. Like Chappie, Cartesian mind-body dualism posits the complete separation of mind and body as separate “substances.”

Opposition to Descartes came from writers like Friedrich Nietzsche, who repeatedly emphasizes the people’s corporeality; according to him, it not only wouldn’t make sense to think about “minds” as something distinct from bodies, it would be a grievous mistake to try to conceive of oneself in this way. And while your instinct might be to dismiss the very idea as a purely theoretical problem, its repercussions are relevant even today, especially with regard to identity-based issues like gay and trans civil rights. (The notion of a difference between one’s gender identity and one’s physiological sex—performativity—is a key concept in understanding trans issues, one that makes a distinction that is at least implicitly Cartesian.) Chappie takes those centuries of intellectual history and hits them with a missile, building a world in which body and mind—or soul, or something resembling a soul—become modular and malleable.



But the best science fiction doesn’t simply ask “what if the world were like this?”—It spins that premise forward to make a statement about the way we live now. And that’s something that Chappie seems utterly unconcerned with. (At least in this regard; the movie is far more agile when engaging social disorder and the privatization of law enforcement). The movie places humanity at the brink of transcendence, but it does so seemingly without considering what might happen when a mind is divorced from its bodily vessel, or how it would change the way we consider ourselves human. At one point, human characters find themselves in such a situation—yet they don’t remark on their inability to smell, taste, or touch. In Chappie’s ontology, the only relevant manifestations of the mind seem to be sight and verbal communication.

But don’t press Blomkamp on the fine points and expect a graduate-level treatise. He’s a storyteller, not an academic. In fact, trying to describe sentience during a press conference about the film, he describes sentience in the same terms Dev Patel’s scientist does: as the ability to think and act creatively. Later, in a hotel room discussing the movie, he describes Chappie’s own consciousness as “something so pure, so innocent,” that it’s a wonder it manages to “exist in such a violent and shitty world.” (Not that Chappie’s optimism is always uninteresting: One of the best things about the film is the way the police drones—which in any other American sci-fi movie would revolt against the humans—simply do their jobs, and do them well.)

And despite Chappie‘s emphasis on the nature of the mind, Blomkamp denies that the movie is really interested in those possibilities. “The core reason for making Chappie isn’t about A.I.,” he says. Instead, he claims it’s about Chappie as a being distinct from the predatory elements of organic life. “The world is a hostile and violent place,” he says. “RNA and DNA have a selfish nature”—what he describes as a constantly running string of programming—“that will deceive and manipulate and try to get what it can get from other organisms.”

How do those two sides of one picture of humanity—the computer scientist and the artist—interact? It’s a frustrating question, the sort of thing that often gets little to no treatment in films, with the possible exception of droll biopics that suggest that being really, really good at science is like art. And the grandeur of Blomkamp’s ideas (and of much of the film’s action sequences), is in sharp contrast to the ideas actually embodied in a deeply, almost painfully optimistic movie about human (and robot) potential.



Blomkamp’s films tend to focus on moments of massive historical change: The end of District 9 sees humans’ mistreatment of the alien “prawns” exposed, while Elysium concludes with the destruction of the class system. But in both of those cases, action-movie structure–and the conventions thereof—prevent a nuanced exploration of their premises. (Blomkamp’s ambition seems perfectly suited to TV, where he would be forced to spend 10 or 20 hours in a world without blowing it up.) Thankfully, in this case Blomkamp may actually be able to pursue his ideas—he has treatments written for two Chappie sequels.

And that leeway may allow him to explore his own shifting perspective: Blomkamp changed his mind about the possibility of artificial consciousness over the course of filming, butting up against an almost religious respect for the innefability of the human mind. “There may be some natural parameters that we’re going to bump into,” he says, “that are more unexplainable than equations and CPUs.” The Singularity anxiety that seems to be gripping ethicists and AI researchers right now—that “AI is going to declare war on the human race”—doesn’t concern him. “It’s super prevalent,” he says, “but there’s a piece of me that thinks it’s wrong.”

Among currently working popular sci-fi auteurs, Blomkamp’s only competition may be the far more cerebral Christopher Nolan (sorry, Wachowskis), so it’s probably a good thing that he feels strongly about consciously rebuking the preexisting traditions of the genre. That tendency will hopefully serve Blomkamp well in his next project—a take on Alien. “I’m not pushing back against it just to push back against it because I’m, like, a sulky kid,” he protests. “I’m pushing back against it because I think that evolution always finds answers in the weirdest places. If we want to play God, things aren’t going to be as easy as we think they will be.”

Not sure if this is a film review, a tribute to Blomkamp's budding talent or the science-fiction genre, or a moral/ethical dissertation


Jo

[jo]

This is more lighthearted and focuses on the entertainment value of the movie -- 4 out of 5.


www.caseymoviemania.com/2015/03/review-chappie-2015.html

Review: CHAPPIE (2015)

4 stars of 5


Despite the familiarity of the genre involving a robot trying to be human, writer-director Neill Blomkamp's subtle mix of gritty realism and wonderful comic relief makes CHAPPIE a solid entertainment.


After receiving mixed reviews from viewers and critics in ELYSIUM (2013), writer-director Neill Blomkamp finally returned to form in CHAPPIE -- a typical but captivating robot movie that combines the elements of SHORT CIRCUIT (1986), ROBOCOP (1987) and A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001).


WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?


Set in the near future of Johannesburg, the introduction of the TetraVaal's law-enforcing robot program known as Scouts has successfully helped the South African police force fight against deadly criminals throughout the city. During one of the police raids, a robot codenamed Scout 22 ends up badly damaged after getting fired into the chest.

Deon (Dev Patel), a developer who is responsible for creating the Scouts, planned to use the dysfunctional Scout 22 as his latest experiment to make him learn and feel like a human being. However, his proposed idea is rejected by the CEO of TetraVaal, Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) and leaves Deon no choice but to smuggle the robot out of the lab himself. Things get worse from there when a trio of desperate gangsters -- Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser) and Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo) -- kidnapped Deon and forces him to reprogram the robot so it can help them commit an upcoming heist.

Meanwhile, Deon's disgruntled co-worker and developer Vincent (Hugh Jackman) subsequently learns about Deon steals the robot away and finds an opportunity to sabotage his reputation, so he can convince Michelle to use his giant robot known as Moose to become the new mechanised police force.




THE GOOD STUFF


Over his past two movies (DISTRICT 9 and ELYSIUM), Neill Blomkamp is primarily known as a visionary filmmaker who favours gritty and realistic sci-fi genre with sociopolitical context. But in his third feature on CHAPPIE, Blomkamp and his co-writer Terri Tatchell are bold enough to go further by integrating SHORT CIRCUIT-like lighthearted comedy element and A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE-like heartfelt "robot-with-a-human-consciousness" storyline set within the chaotic nature of the crime-infested Johannesburg with equal success.

Although CHAPPIE shares many resemblances with ROBOCOP in terms of its visual aesthetics (e.g. Moose, which looks almost identical to ED-209) as well as its plot and character element (e.g. Jackman's character echoes the similarity of Ronny Cox's slimy character as Richard Jones), it's far from a cheap rip-off. Instead, the ROBOCOP-like formula works well with Blomkamp's filmmaking style.

Likewise, Blomkamp's direction is tense while displaying a great visual flair for gory action set-pieces and cool slow-motion effects. Hans Zimmer's synthesiser-heavy score is mesmerising, which reminds me of Vangelis' iconic BLADE RUNNER score. Kudos also go to the amazingly seamless special effects between the robots and the background in the movie.

The cast is impressive, with Dev Patel and Hugh Jackman -- in his rare bad-guy role -- are both noteworthy. Despite appearing only in a small role, Sigourney Weaver is equally memorable as the cold-hearted and profit-hungry CEO of TetraVaal. But it was the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord -- Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser --- who steal most of the show with their flashy, yet surprisingly likable performances playing two violent but sympathetic low-life gangsters. The other scene-stealer is, of course, Blomkamp regular Sharlto Copley, who provides a delightfully childlike and naive voice performance as Chappie.




MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT(S)




The hilarious Grand Theft Auto-like moments where Chappie helps his "daddy", Ninja, to hijack cars around the streets; and the action-packed finale involving Chappie against Moose.


THE BAD STUFF



Blomkamp's same old sociopolitical context related to social disorder and crime wave in Johannesburg starts to feel tedious by now, especially such topic is already covered twice in DISTRICT 9 and ELYSIUM.


FINAL WORDS


Although Neill Blomkamp offers nothing new in a robot movie, CHAPPIE is satisfying enough as one of the best genre movies of its kind.




* This review is written courtesy from Sony Pictures Malaysia IMAX press screening *

[mamaleh]

Ouch! Variety's not a fan. variety.com/2015/film/reviews/film-review-chappie-1201445845/

Ellen

[jo]

Another OUCH!!

From THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER --

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/chappie/review/779116

[jo]

Someone asked on IMDB - who to believe, the critics or other fans's IMDB rating?

And someone provided this insightful perspective :

They both offer a meaningless consensus. Consensus is never of value. My advice is this. Find a small handful of writers/critics who you can trust, who have a clear grasp of their chosen subject, who have knowledge and perspective. Read (or watch) what they have to say, think about it.

They don't have to be "professionals", just people who are trying to understand the movie they just saw and have judged it accordingly.

If the movie still seems interesting to you, then go and see it. From there think about the movie you just saw. Try to understand it. After some thought you'll have a grasp of how well the movie worked (or didn't work) for you.

In the end, you can only "believe" yourself; your own opinion. And you'll only know that by watching the movie. The rest is just a guideline.

I am seeing it today ( March 5) -- in less than 6 hours. We'll see


Jo

[jo]

This one from PLAYLIST is positive -- it gives one good guidance on how to view the movie


blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/review-neill-blomkamps-chappie-starring-die-antwoord-dev-patel-sigourney-weaver-and-hugh-jackman-20150304

Review: Neill Blomkamp's 'Chappie,' Starring Die Antwoord, Dev Patel, Sigourney Weaver And Hugh Jackman


Photo of Drew Taylor
By Drew Taylor | The Playlist

March 4, 2015 at 12:59PM



After failing to launch an ambitious big screen adaptation of videogame sensation "Halo," South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp unleashed "District 9," a tale of aliens abandoned in the slums of Johannesburg that was easily one of the boldest debuts in recent science fiction memory. (It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, along with Adapted Screenplay, Visual Effects and Editing.) Blomkamp's follow-up, "Elysium," was a much larger and loftier proposition, featuring movie stars like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster and an ungainly plot concerning a post-apocalyptic earth and a glittery space station where the planet's wealthy have relocated. Looking back on it, the movie is smart and entertaining and ahead of its time (#OccupyElysium), but it failed to connect on the visceral or emotional level that "District 9" did. For his third film, "Chappie," Blomkamp returns to a story that is more in line, in scale, theme and emotional heft, to "District 9," to tell the story of a precocious, sentient robot. If there's a major problem with "Chappie" though, it's that it hedges a little too closely to Blomkamp's first film.

As "Chappie" begins, so do the feelings of déjà vu: once again we're thrust into a dusty, dystopian future and once again this future is captured in a series of faux documentary snippets. This time, though, newscasters (including, for some reason, Anderson Cooper) are discussing what life is like "after Chappie," a character who hasn't been introduced yet. The movie then cuts to 18 months before these broadcasts, when the plot begins in earnest (the faux documentary conceit is, thankfully, abandoned at this point as well). It seems that in the future, Johannesburg is largely relegated by a robotic police force, designed by young whiz Deon (Dev Patel). Deon, however, wants to create a robot that can actually think and feel for itself, something that both his corporate overlord Michelle Bradley (played by a sadly underserved Sigourney Weaver) and his colleague Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) are in strong opposition to. Bradley wants to keep making money and Moore prefers his own project, a hulking machine called The Moose, which is piloted by a human being.


Of course, this being a cautionary science fiction tale of technology run amok, Deon goes ahead with his experiment, stealing a busted police droid and uploading his new consciousness program. It just so happens that this is the same day that a couple of thugs (played by Ninja and Yolandi Visser from the South African rap outfit Die Antwoord) decide to hijack one of the police robots, in the hopes that they can make Deon reprogram it for their own nefarious purposes. Instead of getting a hardened battle bot, though, Chappie (voiced and performed, via the magic of motion capture, by Sharlto Copley) is more like an innocent child. Still, the thugs do everything they can to turn Chappie into an "indestructible robot gangster #1," with mixed results.




Blomkamp is, undeniably, something of a visionary. His imaginary worlds are always fully formed and hyper-detailed, even if the narratives contained within them don't measure up. They're made even more powerful by how closely they resemble our own experience. He's even more of an essential asset to genre filmmaking because he's so puckishly confrontational, willing to address current issues in an earnest, head-on way. (Remember those leaked Sony emails urging the marketing to stay away from the hot button sociopolitical implications of "Elysium?") "Chappie" is no different. Blomkamp seems to be addressing the current state of drone warfare and, as always, the continuing economic divide between the haves and the have-nots, particularly in struggling countries like South Africa. One sequence in the film takes place in a large, abandoned high rise in downtown Johannesburg, part of a small economic boom that quickly went bust and has left the landscape dotted with unfinished or abandoned commercial properties. It's easy to add thematic texture to the image of an abandoned skyscraper – a building that would have, if completed, been a glittery symbol for prosperity and societal uplift.


Chappie, too, is an ingenious design, especially when you consider that the same design for the hardened police robots also had to double for the more lovable infant robot character. Chappie looks like a robot; there's nothing superfluous or overtly stylized. He's got ears, which go a long way in expressing emotion and could conceivably be antennae (or something), and when Die Antwoord remake Chappie as a gangster (complete with graffiti tags and dangling gold chains), it only enhances the character (and truth be told, Copley does a great job). Blomkamp is a director whose characters go through an emotional and design arcs as the film progresses (think about Damon's robotic exo-skeleton upgrade in "Elysium" or Copley slowly transforming into one of the alien invaders in "District 9") and Chappie is no exception.

More problematic is the use of Die Antwoord. There was really no reason to think the musicians would pull off any kind of performance, especially after word of their hellish on-set behavior got out. For the most part, though, they pull it off. Ninja is sometimes grating, his wiry figure in oversized boxer shorts the perfect example of what a preening wannabe he really is, but Yolandi somehow injects her performance with some unexpected emotional realism. Neither are great actors and both might have been monsters while making the movie, but Blomkamp (with the help of some ingenious editors, no doubt) somehow crafts performances that work, if not completely, than at least in the context of the film. (Jackman, as the snarling bad guy, is a hoot.)


By the time "Chappie" is over, it might remind you a bit too much of Blomkamp's earlier triumph. Like "District 9," this is a movie that is ostensibly aimed at young children (aliens! Robots!), but contains enough gushy ultra-violence to marginally squeak past with an R. It's a movie where a high concept is grafted to an occasionally uncomfortable level of realism and where, at the end, humanity is once again essentially doomed, giving way to something other. Still, between the charming Copley performance, the ingenious visuals, the absolutely incredible all-electronic Hans Zimmer score (seriously, this is one of his best ever), and the propulsive narrative thrust (Blomkamp is rarely singled out for how swiftly he moves things along, plot holes be damned), there is a lot to appreciate and even love about "Chappie." It just would have been nice to see Blomkamp stretch himself as an artist and not return to so many familiar tropes. Maybe he needs a reboot. B

[hughmanity]

This one is mostly positive

www.digitalspy.com/movies/review/a632493/chappie-review-neill-blomkamps-latest-is-short-circuit-meets-robocop.html#~p60QWeFCMIFU8S

[jo]

The New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis gives a fairly honest impression of the movie ( but does not allude to the movie's somewhat disturding ending, which could be the film's major message about artificial intelligence) --

www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/movies/review-chappie-a-smart-robot-in-a-violent-future.html?_r=0

Review: ‘Chappie’: a Smart Robot in a Violent Future

By MANOHLA DARGISMARCH 5, 2015



Frankenstein’s monster gets a titanium makeover in “Chappie,” a science-fiction blood-spurter and would-be heart-warmer that wavers uncertainly between laughter and tears. Set in South Africa in the usual bummer future — yet again, it’s man against man, as well as machine — the movie imagines a scenario in which tin-can police march in lock step with their human analogues to roust the usual tattooed and dreadlocked gun-toting degenerates. All the aerial shots of the dangerously swarming and swelling multitudes suggest that such draconian tactics are necessary.



The director Neill Blomkamp, working with a script he wrote with his wife, Terri Tatchell, doesn’t engage with the question of whether a police state is necessary; he just goes with the paramilitary flow. And, as an introductory flurry of news reports indicates, law demands order. To help stem the murderous tide, the authorities have deployed a force of armed robots, called Scouts, to serve as shields for their human brethren or to fire on the heavily fortified shouting masses. Mr. Blomkamp, who directed the back-to-back science-fiction tales “District 9” and “Elysium,” has a real feel for dystopia, and he persuasively sets a chaotic scene, partly by again shooting in the real Johannesburg.


Given the big studio way, it’s no surprise that the robots, with their matte gray cladding and rabbit ears, swiveling heads and articulated limbs, have been created with more attention to detail than the story. After the preliminaries, a protagonist emerges in the person of Deon (Dev Patel), an engineer for the outfit that churns out the Scouts. His only colleagues who, at that point, seem vaguely sentient are his boss, Michelle (Sigourney Weaver), and a teeth-gnashing foe, Vincent (Hugh Jackman), who parades around with a gun on his belt. One night, Deon takes a decommissioned robot home and, after some Red Bull and energetic keyboard abuse, solves the problem of artificial intelligence. Enter Chappie, played with a singsong by Sharlto Copley, Mr. Blomkamp’s favorite attraction.

Things go wrong like genre clockwork, and Chappie ends up in the hands of a troika of misfit criminals who decide that a smart robot would make a useful accessory to go with their pink and yellow guns, which look as finger-licking good as Valentine’s candy. The South African musicians Ninja (the guy) and Yo-Landi Visser (the woman), bring the cartoon charisma as the flashiest two thirds of this trio, with the American actor Jose Pablo Cantillo, as Yankie, valiantly thumping along as the third wheel. A well-greased matched set, Yo-Landi Visser and Ninja (the characters share the performers’ names), take to Chappie-rearing seriously and soon teach the robot how to talk, shoot and stroll like a gangsta while he, in turn, takes jerky baby steps and calls them Mommy and Daddy.



It’s a goof, as is so much of “Chappie” despite the violence, crenelated brows and choreographed grimaces. For all of Mr. Blomkamp’s attention to grim speculative fiction and its trappings (the despair, the gadgets), he often seems more at ease when things are going right for his characters or when he’s lobbing a joke. Sometimes he uses comedy as a distraction or to soft-pedal an emotion or an idea. It’s funny when Chappie watches the cartoon “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,” because you see him learning, but the scene also gestures to the idea that hyperbolic masculinity is absurd learned behavior. And when Yo-Landi reads a children’s book or chatters sweetly to Chappie, something rather more surprising happens because Mr. Blomkamp has let real emotions creep in, too.


Mr. Blomkamp may be genuinely interested in artificial intelligence, but he doesn’t engage with it (as, say, Steven Spielberg did in “A.I.”) as much as desultorily kick it around. It’s as if he felt that he needed an excuse to trot out his robot, as if one were ever needed. It’s no wonder his nods to earlier texts — from the different iterations of “Frankenstein” to “RoboCop” — register as little more than shorthand for ideas that have been worked out more fully elsewhere. In some movies, allusions to other movies build on earlier thinking or, at times, become an index of authorial self-regard, intended mostly to close the distance between the original and the copy. Here, the allusions feel like the handiwork of someone who’s eager to make something cool and so borrows with promiscuous abandon.

This is Mr. Blomkamp’s third feature, and he’s still finding his way as a director; again and again, as in the past, he struggles with the material, a performance, an idea, the tone or just some blocking. “Chappie” is more visibly modest and less narratively ambitious than his last movie, “Elysium,” which benefited greatly from Matt Damon’s emotionally anchoring star turn as an Everyman struggling among the human-made ruins. Scaling down has its drawbacks, as some of the visible digital artifacts in “Chappie” make clear. Yet even at his shakiest, Mr. Blomkamp holds your attention with stories about characters banding together to emerge from a hell not of their own making, a liberation journey that just isn’t the same old, same old when a director was born in South Africa.

[jo]

Den of Geek rates Hugh Jackman's performance as villain Vincent as one of the best underrated performances in its yearend list --

www.denofgeek.com/movies/underrated-acting-performances/38363/the-underrated-film-acting-performances-of-2015

Hugh Jackman, Chappie






Neil Blomkamp's third film had its fair share of detractors and it'll be a few years before the dust settles and we find out what we really thought of this divisive Die Antwoord vehicle. For our part, Chappie made a strong showing in our top 10 films of the year and although there was praise and derision in all quarters, we haven't seen enough appreciation for Hugh Jackman playing against type as weapons designer Vincent Moore. In fact, he's the most committed performer in the film.

“Vincent is a bit like Ricky [Gervais] in The Office - he thinks everyone likes him when in fact they don’t,” Jackman told the Daily Express when the film was released in cinemas. It's a solid and unconventional touchstone for an antagonist, but on top of his devastating mulleted/polo shirted/cargo shorted look, Vincent's religious zealotry in the face of poor Chappie's revolutionary sentience makes him a compelling contradiction in terms, as both a risible figure and an unnerving one. When we look back on this one, we'll have to admit that Jackman brought it, (whatever 'it' was meant to be.)

Highlight: Unquestionably, it's his delivery of the line “You're making me as cross as a frog in a sock, mate.” You probably wouldn't see that scene in The Office, but the way Jackman holds Dev Patel's Deon at gunpoint and then tries to laugh it off like David Brent afterwards is a weird but powerful character beat.