[...] though "Chappie" bears all the hallmarks of a "RoboCop" retread or a grungier "A.I." (or heaven help us, "Transcendence"), it's actually more like a warped, sci-fi version of "The Jungle Book" in which a child robot must survive the urban wilds of a gang-ridden Johannesburg. The movie's mismatched parts — which includes possibly the most unlikely co-starring combo of all time: the South African rap duo Die Antwoord and Hugh Jackman — fit together about as well as Johnnie Five, the "Short Circuit" bot, and a blender. "Chappie" is the third feature from Blomkamp, who broke through with the alien refugee thriller "District 9" and followed that up with "Elysium," a big-budget allegory in which the 1 percent live on an orbiting space station. [...] Blomkamp makes action-heavy sci-fi that's animated by political ideas and frustrated urgency more than most Hollywood science fiction combined. Dev Patel ("Slumdog Millionaire") plays a wide-eyed, ambitious engineer named Deon whose droids have already become the front lines of Johannesburg's police force. A few cubicles down from him sits a rival engineer (Jackman), whose gargantuan, heavy artillery "Moose" machine has been outshined by Deon's more nimble, human-like "Scouts." The education of Chappie, born into gangsters, pulls in two directions: the caring tenderness of Yolandi and the tough love of Ninja, who wants him to help in a heist.