Once More With Feeling

Conditions: Cold as the Ace of Spades

Film Review: Chappie

Neil Blomkampf seems to have made 3 films now that are basically exactly the same as each other. District 9, Elysium, and now Chappie all tell the tales of ...things that are downtrodden and struggle to get along, and finally have to rise up and save themselves while also perhaps saving others too. Frankly, it’s all wearing a bit thin. This one has the Frankenstein twist, where a mad scientist, or computer geek in today’s terms, played by Dev Patel, has designed a successful army of robot cops for the South African police dept. And now: he’s cracked true A.I. But his boss isn’t really interested. So he steals a busted cop bot and stuffs his new program into it but alas, a couple of crazy criminals hijack him and his robot in order to commit some crimes. Thus the robot, named Chappie, is taught to act and talk like a gangster before musing over the meaning of life. It’s basically Short Circuit meets Robocop meets Short Circuit 2, where Chappie has to learn harsh lessons, then battle with Ed 209, then figure out what to do about a dying battery.

The Ed 209, by the way, is by far the highlight of the film. Piloted by a maniacal Hugh Jackman, who is frustrated that his flying tank has been superseded by the Patel’s robot cops, he finally gets the go ahead to take out everyone in and around the vicinity of Chappie, and especially Chappie himself. Of course this is after Jackman sabotaged the entire system thanks to getting the special key Patel stole. Anyway, the Ed 209 lands right in the middle of the 3rd act and proceeds to violently and gleefully blast everything it can, and much like Blomkampf's last few films it’s a terrific action sequence that really pumps up flagging attention spans amongst the audience.

Ultimately, it’s a very strange and unbalanced film. None of the human characters are worth much. And Chappie himself is a grating blend of innocence and attitude. And it’s a very weird ending as well, somehow managing to abracadabra a Dues Ex Machina out of all the misery. Frankly it’s an ending that doesn’t really feel like it’s been earned. But it is an ending. And we can leave on that. Two flying tanks out of five.



Film Review: Furious 7

The family of fast and furiousness returns with episode 7 (roughly) in this rather robust franchise. With the stakes suitably raised in the last entry, this time the action picks up directly afterwards with Jason Statham playing the very angry elder brother of the defeated bad guy in the last film. In a neat twist, he is revealed as the one who killed Han back in episode 3, and is now coming after the rest of the family. In order to get him first, Vin Diesel and the rest are ...tasked by the CIA to go and get a special device that enables anyone to be found using security cameras, so they can find Statham. Because he can hide you see. Yeah. However as they try to do this Statham keeps popping up like a proverbial boogey man and triggering off various action sequences all around the globe every 15 minutes or so.

For some reason, this one doesn’t quite have the dynamic or style the last one did. It’s a different director – which may account for it, but there’s also a sense of bloat or aimlessness creeping into the film in places, a sense of going through the motions again and having to heave itself through the normal flaming hoops. The film is also compromised by the unfortunate death of Paul Walker during filming, which caused the film to have to be changed about a bit, particularly to give Walker a nice send off at the end.

Ultimately though the film holds up at a basic level. It’s brash, loud and exciting and features lots of cool moments and cars. Unfortunately most of them get blown up at the end, but at least people seemed to be happy when the film was over. I don’t know where this franchise can really go from here, it’s made a habit of upping the stakes with each entry and there’s only so far you can go before you have to set the next one in space or something. But for now the latest stunt is still pretty good. Two and a half vrooms out of five.



- Peace out