Concerns over the use of drones to kill people and the use of military equipment by police make Neill Blomkamp's "Chappie" more relevant. The use of an all-robot police force recalls "RoboCop", while the concept of a droid who has human qualities brings to mind "Short Circuit" and "AI: Artificial Intelligence"*. Although some scenes in the movie come across as silly, I interpreted it as a warning about over-reliance on technology for law enforcement. The South African setting makes sense: four decades of institutionalized racism gave way to one of the highest crime rates in the developed world.

In the end, I recommend the movie. It's understood that Chappie simply wants to be able to live like everyone else. The plot holes don't drag the movie down at all. Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel (of "Slumdog Millionaire"),Sigourney Weaver and Hugh Jackman put on fine performances.

*Another movie focusing on a robot with human qualities is "Robot & Frank", starring Frank Langella and Susan Sarandon.

If a movie has a robot in it, that is part cop, the comparisons with Robocop won't be hard to find. But this is a different beast altogether. Trying to get into a discussion about machines, souls and after-life. Not everything gels in perfectly and nicely. But the director does a good job with a lot of elements. Something that might have spun out of control, but it didn't.

While the name Chappie might remind some of dog (food) and I can only guess that was intended, there is more to Chappie than just being a "pet". Chappie is getting and learning things fast as you'd expect and the lines between good and evil blur at times, if not through the whole movie. That might be tough to handle or accept for some, but if you do roll with it, you'll see a very entertaining movie, that can give you food for thought ...

Chappie is an interesting film because it could be ridiculed for random themes and inconsistent story, or it could be praised for the fact that it brings up a lot of ambitious ideas and concepts.

It is a really interesting film as far as themes go. The movie brings up a lot of ideas that aren't brought up in most "AI" films such as: Does the robot recognize his own mortality? Does the robot feel guilt? How does the robot react to having one parent being a criminal and the other parent being a respectful scientist? There were a lot of scenes where I was thinking "Dang, this could lead to a pretty cool concept".

Unfortunately, the movie never fleshes out any of its themes.

It is always very sad to see a movie like this: A movie that has all the right elements to be good, but it gets too distracted in being too many things so it never gets any of the elements right. For example, one of the ingenious themes is the fact that Chappie has two parents: A scientist and a very violent thug. On one side Chappie is learning about the basics of language and how to be a model citizen, but on the other side he is learning how to properly mug people, how to fight, how to talk cool, how to walk cool, and how to earn respect from other people. This is very interesting because the movie never starts Chappie out as super intelligent, it starts him out as a very quick learning child. This means you can see him slowly learn and make connections between every event in his life.

A great example of this is Chappie is told that knives make people go to sleep, so naturally Chappie tries to stab people until he is told that they don't want to go to sleep. However, when Chappie starts stabbing people later, you see him pause and looks into someone's eyes and say "I'm sorry, I didn't know. Don't go to sleep". But he says it very quietly so that no one else can hear.

These are some very deep and interesting themes and Chappie is a very interesting character. Unfortunately, it never fleshes out its themes. This means a lot of very profound themes will fly by in about five minutes and not show up later. This also brings us to one hilarious big issue with the movie:

Every scene involving the villain makes little to no sense. It's not that I don't mind Hugh Jackman, or the approach they were taking, it was how insane and over the top he becomes. He is supposed to be playing a local engineer/scientist who wants to make human controlled mechs that are grossly over-powered for the job of law enforcement. Instead of modifying his idea and making it work for the job, he still says that law-enforcement needs a mech with... mini-guns, claws, machine guns, rockets, cluster missiles, and just about anything you can think of. It really makes no sense to want that on the street. This brings up several questions: Why not just sell it to the military? He does work for a weapons company so if not law enforcement why not military (He was hinted at being an ex- solider/Veteran). So his obsession doesn't really make sense: If he really wants human controlled machines, then make one less overpowered. If he really wants an overpowered mech, then sell it to the military.

However, because he doesn't do either of these, he becomes an insane psychopath who literally shuts down all of the security/robots in the city just to prove that they need heavier firepower for the job. This brings up a lot of plot-holes: How was he able to do this so easily? Any company (even your local cable company) can track a computer that is shutting down other equipment. How did no one notice him doing this? Why didn't the protagonist tell anyone else that he was doing this? How was he able to gruesomely kill fairly innocent people, while laughing, and no one in the office space took notice? This element of the movie truly absurd and doesn't even fit into the plot. He really is a shoe-horned villain. Just about anyone else could've been the villain and it would've made more sense. Why not the ring-leader from the beginning? He said he wanted to shut- down all of the robots? Several other people were looking for a remote to shutdown all of the robots, so literally anyone could've been the villain and would've had better motives than Hugh Jackman.

Other than that, the ending is a bit random, but I was okay with it until the last minute or so. The very very end is kind of... okay? That doesn't make sense with the universe's set rules, but... okay... Fortunately, the other characters in this movie are pretty good. Some people may find them annoying, but I found it interesting because its not like Chappie fell into the hands of perfect people who knew how to use him, Chappie fell into the hands of people who have no idea how robots work or the science behind them. So certain people attach to him differently. Some people treat him like a human, while others do not.

All in all, a smarter than your average film, but full of plot-holes and issues. Kind of sad, really.