Chappie (Neill Blomkamp, 2015)

District 9 director Blomkamp directs more sci-fi, back in his native South Africa, with very mixed results. The idea of a robot becoming sentient is nothing new in itself, but there is a twist in his creator tussling with a nasty gang to educate the child-like machine with diametrically opposed values. That aside, there are lashings of extreme violence and the worst collection of haircuts in living memory, including Hugh Jackman's rare turn as a mulleted baddy. It manages to retain the attention for the most part simply through eccentric ideas, but there has to be something fundamentally wrong when the most sympathetic character in a film is a droid.

4/10