“Chappie” is an update on the “Pinocchio as a robot” story, the sentient cyborg wants to be real sort of thing, a kind of South African “Short Circuit” blended with a little “Robocop.” With a mix of comedy, science fiction, action and a bit of social satire, “Chappie” is a good movie blending some cool ideas and featuring incredible special effects, and would have been great if the story itself was just a little more developed.
It is the very near future and things, as always in these kinds of movie, have gone to complete shit. In Johannesburg, South Africa, the police have contracted a weapons company to provide hundreds of drone cops, robots that accompany the police officers and are helping to drop crime rates everywhere. Engineer Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) is the creator of these robots called Scouts, yet he himself just is a worker drone within the massive weapons company anyway. On the side he’s managed to create an artifical intelligence program that he could install into a robot to test out, but when his boss (Sigourney Weaver) refuses to give him a discarded robot to work with, he ends up stealing it so he could do the A.I. testing on the down low. But wouldn’t you know it, Deon gets kidnapped himself by a trio of gangsters who then end up stealing his robot with the brand new A.I. program, and they name is Chappie (Sharlto Copley) and teach it to gangsta lean, curse and throw ninja stars, all so they can use it in a heist to make a bunch of money.Continue Reading …