SomeoneMovie Review: District 9
August 17th 2009 14:06
Premise: Aliens land on Earth, with their ship settling to hover above Johannesburg. Instead of a delegation or an army, it appears the aliens are refugees and their ship has shut down. They are moved to a camp beneath the ship, which quickly devolves into a slum, walled in and ruled by gangs. Fast forward 20 years, and inter-species tensions are at breaking point. Seeking to control the situation, the government hires MNU (Multi-National United) to evict the million aliens, and move them to another camp further outside the city, where they will not cause so many problems.
All I can say about this movie is... wow. Absolutely incredible. Star Trek blew me away, like only a truly breathtaking sci-fi movie can, and this is a feeling similar to what District 9 delivers.
Script: Mind-blowingly excellent. It raises more questions than it answers, but not through plot holes (which is a nice change). I've been reading alot of criticism of the script online, but if you pay attention and think about things a little, there really aren't very many. Just because the movie doesn't spell everything out for you, doesn't mean it's got a weak script.
The parallels with apartheid, and more recently with the racial tensions in South Africa, are easy to draw, and the movie is brutal in it's portrayal. The lives that the 'prawns' lead are not happy ones, and perhaps more disturbing is the fact that the shantytown used in the set is an actual place, evacuated during filming and it's residents moved to upgraded government housing (oddly echoing the events of the film). The only shack created for the film was that of the main prawn, Christopher Johnson. It's a depressing scene, and the fact that these aliens live the lives that human beings actually lead is never too far out of your thoughts during the movie.
Speaking of Christopher Johnson, the idea of giving such an odd looking alien a human name is pure genius. It's such an ordinary sounding name, for such an odd creature. Over the course of the movie, we come to empathize with Christopher Johnson and the downtrodden prawns more than the brutal and oppressive humans, and by the end of the movie I genuinely cared whether or not they were going to succeed. Some of the merit for that goes to the script, which was surprisingly unpredictable. I went in knowing very little about the movie, and had no idea where the movie was headed. Given the glut of predictable, flimsily-scripted films that I have seen lately, it's nice to be entertained like that.
Perhaps the triumph of the movie is, I hate to say it, the CGI. Being a horror man, I the idea of CGI usually doesn't sit right with me, but District 9 is something special. The movie had a budget of (only) $30 million, yet it easily has the look and feel of a $200 million dollar movie. Not once was the movie let down by weak CGI, from the superbly detailed mothership to the alien exo-skeleton (straight out of Aliens and on steroids) and it's impressive arsenal. There were come excellent moments of brutality that left everyone in the cinema a little stunned, especially involving one of the alien fighting-suits.
Acting: The lead, Sharlto Copley, is not a professional actor. He was a sniper in Alive In Joburg, the short on which this film was based, and has no intention of pursuing an acting career. Despite his lack of experience, he displays some pretty hefty acting chops, and puts in a fine performance. David James plays a pretty mean bad guy, as do the various Nigerian gangsters.
Now, it turns out that Blomkamp was working on the Halo movie adaptation, and when that fell through Peter Jackson came to him and said "Here's $30 million, make whatever you want", with District 9 being the result. I have heard unverified rumors that they took the unfinished halo movie and cannibalized it to make this one... and, seeing as I played a lot of Halo back in the day, I did notice some striking similarities. For instance, the white-ish rifle that the marines use is clearly modeled on a Battle Rifle, and some of the alien weapons bear resemblance to covenant weaponry. Of course the movie has nothing to do with Halo, so it isn't necessary to know this, but still worth keeping an eye out for if you're a fan of the games.
Overall... Just great sci-fi. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will definitely be seeing it again before it leaves the cinemas.
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