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EDITOR'S PICK
'Chappie'
- Oddly charming (IANS Movie Review)
Rating:
***
Neil Blomkamp loves robots and aliens more than human beings and maybe that's
why all his stories so far have had something to do with the man versus machine
concept.
After making his smashing debut in 2009 blockbuster 'District 9', Neil became a
much sought after filmmaker. But the overnight success didn't last long as his
big budget sci-fi drama 'Elysium', his second film turned out to be a disaster.
And his latest outing 'Chappie' feels like it's been made from nuts and bolts of
his earlier films and the pieces don't fit the way they should.
In 'Chappie', he envisions a world where robots aid police force in bringing
down the crime rate. They don't just aid, but even risk their lives to save
their human counterparts. In one such operation, a droid gets severely broken
beyond repair.
Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) is the chief designer of the robots that have been
successfully assisting the Johannesburg police department in fighting crime and
his organization is proud of his work. But Deon has been secretly working on a
programme that will allow robots to have a mind of their own, behave and feel
like humans with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). When he pitches the
idea, his boss doesn't approve, forcing him to illegally test it on the broken
droid.
Deon's ambitious plan goes for a toss when he is kidnapped by a group of
gangsters, who plan to use him to programme a robot to help them pull off a big
heist. Deon reprogrammes the broken droid with AI, and Chappie is born.
'Chappie' has very little story and whatever it has doesn't quite engage us. But
what's charming about the film is Neil's idea to treat humans and robots
equally. When a robot can behave like us and has feelings of its own, thanks to
AI, why should it still do whatever it's instructed to do. With a mind of its
own, a robot can differentiate between right and wrong but it needs to be shown
how and that's where human intervention is needed.
When Chappie is first brought back to life, it reacts to its surroundings with
fear. Deon calls it a child and says it needs to be oriented. When you forget
Chappie is a robot and treat it like a child, you'll appreciate what Blomkamp
tries to address here. While the gangsters want Chappie to help them pull off a
heist, Deon wants it to learn a la humans. In a touching scene, Deon encourages
Chappie to paint and read a book about a black sheep. Typically, a black sheep
is a disreputable member of a family or group, but here it stands for someone
unique and different. Chappie is the black sheep, and its uniqueness is
symbolically highlighted by the orange coloured ear, which is quite evident even
in the film's posters.
But these wonderful moments don't make up for the lack of story. And there's
plenty of awe-inspiring action in this insipid tale which like Neil's earlier
films is set in his birthplace Johannesburg in South Africa. For reasons nobody
would understand, the director had cast two members of the rave-rap group Die
Antwoord in the lead roles, while Dev Patel tries his best to do justice as a
nerd. Jackman was merely cast for the purpose to fill in the shoes of a bad man
in such stories.
'Chappie' has lots of issues but it definitely isn't a bad film. Agreed the
concept is archaic, but there's something oddly charming about it.