Chappie

Chappie provides a rare treat, a biblical movie that fails to sound preachy. Perhaps this happens because the movie performs more as a metaphor of religion (think Tron Legacy) than as a shallow, religious-based, scare-tactic (think The Lazarus Effect).

In Chappie, Dev Patel plays God. Well, actually, he plays an inventor named Deon Wilson, who builds a robotic police force.

These robots act intelligently, but lack free will and creativity. Deon desperately wishes to create life capable of these gifts. He eventually succeeds to create such a robot, which writers Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell surprisingly named “Chappie” instead of “Adam.”

Still, the writers must’ve feared, on some level, that their audience might not grasp the metaphor, so Deon often tells Chappie, “I am your Creator. You must listen to Me.”

Chappie discovers himself influenced by people who act as walking metaphors for greed, envy, and every other sin ever imagined.

One character, played by Hugh Jackman, behaves as the embodiment of War.

Chappie quickly discovers himself “adopted” by two criminal humans who tell Chappie to call them “Mommy” and “Daddy.” Daddy afterwards behaves as the bad father, pushes upon Chappie gender roles and fear of the outside world.

This robot wishes to read, watch cartoons, and paint while the world's underbelly taints him . . . until he grows enraged and violent and loses all contact with his Creator.

Chappie eventually decides for himself the lines between right and wrong, but not without humanizing irony.

He viciously assaults a characters for killing someone, beats the attacker within an inch of death, all the while Chappie screams, “Violence is wrong,” as if to stage a statement against . . . say, the death penalty.

Chappie also discovers how to create life on his own, and thus he becomes a metaphor of humanity's desire to create artificial intelligence, which brings the entire movie full circle.

Chappie's Creator also creates him with a defected battery, which means that Chappie can only live for a limited time. The realization that he will die, further distances Chappie from his Creator.

SPOILER ALERT! THIS PARAGRAPH! Deon the Creator dies, but Chappie manages to reincarnate him into the body of another robot—which wears paint red enough to remind its audience of a certain, infamous, false god (though I might read too much into that detail).

Chappie possesses no shortage of flaws as a movie. Nearly every other scene ends in a way that makes little to no sense, usually in the following formula:

Person A must stop Person B through any means. Person A possesses every ability to stop Person B . . . and yet fails to do so for no apparent reason.

However, Chappie still works as a film, so long as its audience can suspend its disbelief and enjoy Chappie as an artfully constructed metaphor, rather than a solid story with an acceptable number of plot holes.

The best part of this movie remains the fact that I continue to revisit it in my head, to pull at and twist it, rethink certain scenes. That seems a damn good experience for twelve dollars and two hours.

Also, a bright pink Uzi feels pretty entertaining.