Review: "Chappie"

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Runtime: 120 minutes

Hollywood loves the comfort of formula over the perils of risk. While there's nothing inherently malicious about this mindset, it can, over time, stifle more ambitious ideas and projects. The industry's current state makes a movie like Chappie, the third film from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, all the more remarkable. Chappie is a film full of knowingly weird elements, from its mix of tones to its casting choices. Yet even though Blomkamp's risks remain admirable, and the film has more of Blomkamp's voice than sophomore effort Elysium, Chappie is an unfortunate instance where almost none of the risks have paid off. Ambition and execution are vastly different things, and, despite a few promising steps in the right direction, Blomkamp is unable to translate the former into the latter.

The world of Chappie, set only a few years in the future, is a return to Blomkamp's District 9 roots. The setting is Johannesburg, and technological advances are few and far between. This time, however, the sci-fi pieces of the story stem not from alien refugees, but from man-made devices. Seeking to cut down on crime rates (as well as officer fatalities), South Africa implements the world's first robotic police force, courtesy of the Tetra Vaal corporation, headed by Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver). Lead programmer Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) is the true star of the company, and is doing his best to push the robots even further: he wants to create a truly sentient robot, capable of emotions and opinions. He even has a malfunctioning police robot that would be perfect to test his new program on. Bradley is dismissive of the idea, as is co-worker (and former soldier) Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), who has a near-religious fear of AI. With its corporate overlords and security state parallels, Chappie lays out a basic foundation that one expects of this sort of sci-fi adventure. And then the rappers step in. 

Though one of the film's eventual protagonists is the titular robot (created via motion capture with actor Sharlto Copley), the biggest casting risk found in Chappie is the use of South African rap-rave duo Die Antwoord. Members Yolandi Visser and Ninja play fictionalized (and gangsta-ized) versions of their stage personas, and they represent Chappie biggest gamble (yes, moreso than forcing Jackman to sport a mullet from hell). Everything about them is attention-grabbing, from their speaking voices to their decorative instincts (the duo's lair appears to have been marked up with a mix of chalk and highlighters). In essence, they look like extras from a Mad Max film by way of an episode of Wacky Races. The pair hijacks Deon's truck (with the future Chappie in tow), and steal the droid in an attempt to hack the system (the "off switch" for the police bots is kept in a heavily-guarded vault). Given the nature of Deon's program, Chappie starts out with the robot equivalent of a toddler's capabilities. 

Chappie's childlike personality informs the central conflict of the story, which sees Deon, Yolandi, and Ninja all trying to raise the droid in different ways. While Deon and (surprisingly) Yolandi are gentle, Ninja has no patience for the creature's infantile first phases. Had Blomkamp and co-writer Teri Tatchell honed in on the story's family of freaky outsiders, Chappie might have built to something genuinely resonant. Instead, the scattershot script is constantly interrupting Chappie's growth with not one, but two completely separate villains. In addition to Jackman's increasingly unhinged Vincent, Blomkamp also insists on holding onto local gang lord Hippo (Brandon Auret), to whom Yolandi and Ninja owe millions of dollars.

With so much crammed in, Chappie is narratively overstuffed, even at two hours. Just as Yolandi and Ninja clash when it comes to how to raise their titanium-coated child, Blomkamp and Tatchell struggle to streamline the various pieces of the story into a coherent final product. There's little change in the filmmaking when Blomkamp tries to inject some odd-ball black comedy, and then switch to what should be a more introspective moment. The pacing is monotonous, leaving the smaller moments - such as a damaged and heart-broken Chappie finding companionship with a stray dog - without room to take hold. With sharper scripting and more varied direction, Chappie could have conjured up some moments of WALL-E-type grace, albeit with a bizarro, R-rated edge. Instead, these potentially affecting moments move along as if they're being rolled off of an assembly line, just like the rest of the film.

Mr. Copley, who has had a major role in all of Blomkamp's work to date, is hurt most of all by the film's failings. The heart and soul of the character never has a fighting chance against the suffocating, increasingly stupid escalation of the plot. As is to be expected, Blomkamp's ability to come up with designs for robots, weapons, vehicles, but his filmmaking robs Chappie and Copley of the opportunity to create something on the same level as Andy Serkis' creations in The Lord of the Rings or Planet of the Apes. Copley has turned in a few truly bad performances since District 9, but when working with Blomkamp, the actor is in his element. If only the director had given him the attention he deserved here.

Other performances unremarkable, and, like Copley, are let down by both the writing and direction. Patel comes closest to giving a legitimately good performance. In his interactions with Chappie, Patel brings a lot of heart to Deon, the only person who has the robot's best interests in mind from the very start. Jackman has fun playing a villain, but all of his scenes are reliant on the same one-note menace. Weaver, no stranger to making her mark in science fiction, is utterly wasted in what basically amounts to a glorified cameo. 

Yet even though Chappie is the would-be heart of the story, nothing better encapsulates the experience of Chappie the film like Die Antwoord. Though neither have acting experience, the duo's freaky, theatrical performance styles aren't an entirely bad match for the screen. But, in keeping with everyone else, Yolandi and Ninja are flat, one-note characters (that Ninja is nothing but a jackass until the final minutes doesn't help at all). Their top-to-bottom weirdness is curious and refreshing at first, and lends the film a distinctly South African stamp. But in the context of Blomkamp's repetitive, at times incoherent, filmmaking, even the allure of their unique identities feels worn out by the end. Weirdness for the sake of weirdness can produce arresting results (e.g. the best work of David Lynch), but when said weirdness is filtered through increasingly routine blockbuster chaos, it winds up as intellectually and emotionally hollow as most of the robots on screen.

Grade: C-

Review: "Elysium"

Director: Neill Blomkamp
Runtime: 109 minutes

I once read an astute assessment of director Neill Blomkamp's District 9, wherein the author pointed out that one of that film's best traits was the feeling that there was an entire world beyond the confines of what was captured on the camera. Blomkamp's lived-in, grungy alien ghetto in Johannesburg, with its crustacean-esque inhabitants, was one of that film's best attributes. For that matter, so was the alien technology, which struck a refreshing balance between looking economical and futuristic. Blomkamp's gift with tech design remains firmly intact with Elysium, and it's only magnified with his much larger budget. Unfortunately, what Elysium packs in great design, it lacks in compelling characters or consistent writing. 

Where District 9 imagined a world where aliens became refugees in the present, Elysium catapults humanity into the future (surely, someone is already at work proving that the two films exist in the same timeline). As expected, everything is bigger in Elysium, with its massive (titular) space colony (for the 1%-ers, naturally), and chaotic, sprawling cities. Like many a dystopia, the main earthly setting is Los Angeles. However, the city looks like a frigteningly large slum, rather than the chilly neon metropolis found in, say, Blade Runner. To put it bluntly: Earth has become something of a hell hole.

The fact that Elysians have miraculous medical pods that can cure basically anything certainly isn't helping relations between the colony and the overcrowded blue sphere below. Officials like security minister Delacort (Jodie Foster) try to make sure that things stay that way. When three ships try to break into Elysium to utilize the med-pods, Delacort swiftly orders her rogue agent Kruger (District 9 lead Sharlto Copley) to shoot them down. All in a day's work between brunches and housewarming parties. 

So who's to stand up to Delacort's violent elitism? If you guessed that it's the fella who looks like Matt Damon, you'd be correct. After an accident at work leaves Damon's Max with only five days to live (pointed out in a darkly funny exchange with a medicine-dispensing robot), the ex-con decides to try and make his way to Elysium to heal himself. Of course, complications arise (for both Max and Delacort), and soon Max's mission becomes not just a quest to heal himself, but to try and break Elysium's stranglehold on its near-miraculous health care technology.

Yet even within the confines of a relatively straightforward set-up, Blomkamp ultimately falls victim to his larger budget. The look of his world, as rendered through truly stunning special effects work, is first rate. It's sleek and detailed without ever looking plastic. Rather than go all out with huge VFX battles, the director keeps the action largely contained to shootouts and fistfights. He allows his technology to merely enhance the action, rather than overtake it. Even more impressive is that Blomkamp allows his conflicts to get appropriately grisly (credit should also go to the studio, for not forcing Blomkamp to make the film PG-13).

But all of the cool gadgetry in the world can't cover up the thin writing. For the first two thirds, Elysium manages to stay afloat, as it builds its world and the various conflicts. Damon has some appealing moments as he jokes with (or openly mocks) the brutish droid police. And, as evidenced by the Bourne films, he makes for a compelling action hero, even with a frame significantly more compact than many of his contemporaries. Sharlto Copley, meanwhile, appears to be having a lot of fun as the sadistic Kruger, while Alice Braga injects some appealing naturalism into her role as a friend from Max's childhood. 

The performance that's sure to leave most people talking, and not necessarily in a good way, is Jodie Foster. What seems like a strong match of character and actor is thrown off by Foster's puzzling pseudo-French accent. It doesn't derail the performance, but it's an unnecessary distraction that's only made worse because Delacort isn't much more than the average cold hearted antagonist. Like most of Elysium, she's functional and expected, despite a level of visual craft that suggests something far superior.

The relative blandness of the writing rears its ugly head once the final act arrives, and permanently throws Elysium off course. The stakes are there, but there's little tension because of the disconnect between the effort put into the film's look, versus the effort put into the film's characters. By the time the finale starts, Damon's character almost feels like an afterthought, even though he remains the protagonist. Instead of tension, the ending turns into tedium, as the plot lurches along through a checklist of events necessary for the big moments at the end. Blomkamp's strengths as a visual artist are still commendable, but even they can't elevate a story that's simply been done too many times. 

Grade: C+/C