“Chappie” — starring Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel and Hugh Jackman

7 out of 10

By Jack McAuslan ’16
THE ROUNDUP

Director Neill Blomkamp has been known mostly for utilizing unbelievably realistic CGI effects and for movies that call into question some modern day social issues.

“District 9” showed what issues many countries around the world face when it comes to racism and becoming part of a new society, but it was taken to the extreme in the movie.

“Elysium” took on the issues of either unsocialized healthcare or the issues that a massive wealth gap could cause, depending on how you looked at the movie.

“Chappie,” however, is more complicated than either of these. On one hand it shows just how problematic it may be to have a drone-based police force.

On the other hand, it could be predicting a social issue that we may have in the future: sentient drones.

Either way, the whole idea of a living and feeling robot is pretty far fetched, but this movie depicts what we humans would most likely do if the situation arises, which is panic.

In “Chappie,” the police force of Johannesburg, South Africa is run by robots whose only mission is to put an end to the extreme levels of crime in the South African city.

When the creator of the extremely successful robots decides to test a new program that could give a robot personality and consciousness he has to team up with three gangsters to keep Chappie a secret.

Throughout the film, Chappie the sentient robot, played by Sharlto Copley, is subjected to the horrors of urban Johannesburg, such as gang attacks and heists, and he is forced to learn how to survive in this place.

Some of these scenes, despite Chappie not being human, were very hard to watch simply because, as Chappie develops, he becomes human to the viewers.

While Chappie figures out how to survive in the real world, his creator, Deon, played by Dev Patel, has to battle with a few gangsters for Chappie.

The main difference between what Deon wants and what the gangsters want is money.

The gangsters see Chappie as a source of income while Deon only wants Chappie because he cares for him.

As the movie went on it started to get more and more predictable.

Chappie needs more battery but can’t be recharged so, because he is a super fast learning robot, he learns how to fix all of his problems along with problems that Deon and the gangsters face.

The biggest issue with the movie, though, is the ending.

For spoiler reasons I can’t say exactly what happens, but the gist of it is this: Even though the idea of a sentient robot is pretty out there, it was still believable to an extent.

The end takes it all to the extreme and makes it all sort of ridiculous and no longer believable which, sadly, spoils the rest of the movie.

“Chappie” is an exciting and extremely interesting movie but concludes with an ending that spoils the believability of the rest of the movie.