Starring Dev Patel and Hugh Jackman. Rated 14A. Now playing.

Ever since his aliens-as-allegory breakout, District 9, filmmaker Neill Blomkamp has let it be known he is not afraid to ask big questions while making things go boom. But even by those standards he's outdone himself with Chappie.

On one level, it's a maniacal, over-the-top sci-fi-action film. The crime-ridden Johannesburg of the near future  is now guarded by a fleet of Scouts, mass-produced robots that take the bad guys' bullets for the human cops.

But head engineer Deon (Dev Patel) dreams of more.

He's figured out a way to give one test robot the ability to think and feel for himself. The only problem is Chappie gets into the wrong hands: those of baddest-ass South African rap-rave freak-outs Yo-Landi Vi$$er and Ninja, the Die Antwoord duo reimagining themselves as gun-toting criminals.

Cue gun battles, explosions, chase scenes, and attempts at sabotage by a mullet-haired Hugh Jackman as a robot designer who thinks artificial intelligence is dangerous.

It's a topic that is hugely timely, with brainiacs like Stephen Hawking making headlines by warning about the perils of technology getting too smart.

But Blomkamp, ballsy as ever, takes the idea even further here, probing with surprising depth the nature of consciousness, and its ability to exist beyond our physical bodies—something philosophers and scientists (who have never really been able to define where consciousness resides) have pondered for ages. And this is where Chappie separates itself from the likes of RoboCop and I, Robot.

To explain more would give away too much, but suffice it to say Chappie, from the moment he comes into being, becomes obsessed with surviving beyond the life span of the battery fitted into his chest plate.

Some of the great joys in the film come from watching its titanium title character. It's not just that his computer generation looks so real, but that he is so eager and childlike at first. (Watch squeaky-chipmunk-voiced  Yo-Landi teach him to call her Mommy, which he does for the rest of the movie.)

Proving that even robots can have inner turmoil, Chappie is torn between's Deon's lessons about right and wrong and Ninja's push to make him "the illest gangsta on the block", complete with bling chains.

He's hugely sympathetic, and embodies another of Blomkamp's favourite themes: the idea of the "other" or "black sheep", as it's put in a favourite storybook Deon gives him.

And if you're wondering how the manic, mullet-mohawked rhyme-slingers behind Die Antwoord fare with such big roles in a feature film, they fit perfectly into Blomkamp's crazed Armageddon: their crumbling urban lair is outfitted with all their signature monster stuffies and graffiti. Yo-Landi's pastel hot pants and tank tops even match her pink automatic weapon.

In fact, everything looks cool here, with Blomkamp managing to give a grittiness that contrasts the generic, artificial sheen you see in so much other sci-fi.

But his biggest triumph is still getting us to care for a hunk of metal—and then having that hunk of metal pose some pretty radical ideas about our mortality.