Man vs Machine vs Man.
Brought to you by Neill Blomkamp, the director of “District 9”, “Chappie” starts off with a familiar basis. Set in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2016, an elite team of robotic police officers, referred to as Scouts, are used by authorities to prevent crime rate from rising.
This team of elite forces were created by a young Deon Wilson (played by Dev Patel) and produced by the corporation Tetra Vaal. Wilson, who’s not satisfied with his success believes he can make robots that think and feel for themselves without being controlled by humans. He proposes this idea of his to Tetra Vaal CEO Michelle Bradley (played by Sigourney Weaver) but was rejected by her, which led him to do something no one expected of him.
Apart from just having to deal with Bradley’s rejection, Wilson also has a huge enemy at Tetra Vaal in the form of a Vincent Moore (played by Hugh Jackman) who blames Wilson for the cutback on his project — a different giant crime fighter named The Moose.
After being rejected by Bradley, Wilson stole a damaged scout, Unit 22, to test his new artificial intelligence program on. Unfortunately for him, he gets kidnapped by a trio of street criminals led by Ninja and Yo-Landi (played by Watkin Tudor Jones and ¥yo-Landi Vi$$er of the South African rap group Die Antwoord) to see if Wilson can shut down the Scouts so they can commit a heist which can save their lives as they owe a bigger thug 20 million dollars.
Once they take Wilson back to their hideout and learn that he can’t shut down the Scouts, they get Wilson to program Unit 22 into listening to them and fighting on their side. Given no choice and room for escape, Wilson installs his experimental A.I program into Unit 22 which was soon named Chappie by Yo-Landi.
The newly programmed Unit 22, now named Chappie, starts off with a childlike demeanour and is taught to do things. Chappie also makes a promise to his maker Wilson, that he will not do any thing bad or crime related but is tricked by his gangster buddies. Primarily focusing on Chappie, the movie continues as Moore hacks into Tetra Vaal’s system and overwrites all the Scouts, causing each and everyone of them to shut down.
Chaos breaks out in South Africa with everyone going wild and Chappie is caught committing crime on camera which leads to Moore successfully tricking Bradley into allowing him to use “The Moose” to take control of things. As the movie develops, things just get messier and louder before coming to an end with what looks like a sequel waiting to happen.
Yes, we will admit that the character of Chappie does manage to get his audience to sympathise for him but we personally couldn’t help but feel annoyed throughout the movie because it was a case of “been there, done that”.
But, don’t take our word for it and we encourage you to watch the movie and share your thoughts about it with us in our comments section.
Watch the trailer here:
Chappie is set to hit cinemas on 5th March (Friday).
For more information, visit the movie’s Facebook page.
