Chappie (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium)
	Actors: Sharlto Copley (The A-team), Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire), Hugh Jackman (The Fountain), Sigourney Weaver (Alien 1-4, Avatar)
	Country: USA, MEX
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 29.07.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: In the near future the Police of Johannesbourg recruits robots to fight crime. The creator of those units (Patel) is dreaming of upgrading one with Artificial Intelligence, when he is kidnapped by gangsters.
Review: After the excellent surprise District 9 and the slightly disappointing Elysium, Bloomkamp delivers yet another high-tech SF story in which classes clash and a loner gets trapped in the middle of stakes bigger than life. Only this time the loner is a robot freshly equipped with A.I., and so learning about life as a child would. By the way a nice vocal and motion capture performance by Sharlto Copley. The story is interesting and Chappie and its relationship with humans touching, but it is difficult to take the bad guys seriously, which minimizes the spectator's involvement in the movie. There are some nice action scenes like the one towards the end with a big robot that looks like like Robocop's ED209, and that reminds of the Mecha in District 9, but those scenes are a bit under-used and too quickly expedited. Note that the tagline "Humanity's last hope isn't human" is mis-leading as the movie doesn't reveal any world-class threat. Let us now wait for the director's next project, an Alien sequel in which he got involved after getting a lot of attention thanks to some concept drawings he distributed online (see some of them below).
Rating: 5 /10