Directed by: Neil Blomkamp
Starring: Sharlto Copley, David James
Plot: An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their biotechnology. Taken from www.imdb.com.
Who could have imagined that the "Halo" movie falling through would be the greatest thing to happen to the world of film in ages? (Me.) Where Peter Jackson's adaptation of the hit video game series died, something big and amazing rose from its ashes.
That movie is "District 9" (alternate title: "Apartheid 2: Apartharder") a movie that could easily stand to make itself one of those big science fiction movies that people remember for generations to come just out of sheer determination.
We're given the main character of Wikus Va De Merwe a representative for an evil future corporation named MNU. It seems that 20 years ago a giant alien spaceship parked in the skies over Johannesburg, South Africa and has been sitting there ever since.
What started out as humanitarian aid to save the sickly aliens that were inexplicably trapped on earth turned into prison camps and countrywide racism from even the people who are victims of racism on their own. The aliens are all kept in a militarized slum known as "District 9."
Wikus leads a squad of MNU representatives into District 9 to deliver eviction notices to the Prawn (the slang term used for the alien race that actually describes a giant South African grasshopper, not a shrimp) so that they can be moved out of Johannasberg into an even shittier slum well outside of city limits.
Well unfortunately in searching through the shacks, Wikus comes onto a strange cylinder that sprays him with some weird black liquid. Soon he begins becoming a prawn himself and the government is using him for testing of the prawn's weapons (which can only be used by someone with prawn DNA.)
Wikus escapes his captors and flees to District 9 where he teams up with one of the more intelligent Prawn, named Christopher Johnson. Together they go to retrieve the strange cylinder which is actually fuel so that Christopher can get back to the mother ship and leave earth as well as change Wikus back to a human.
The prawn are all CG and their voices are represented with a series of clicks so there's nothing acting-wise to talk about there. And while the film's villain David James is suitably prickish he's nothing new.
What is impressive is the film's star Sharlto Copley. Wikus is not a hero, he's not even an anti-her0, he's a bookish little racist prick with a short temper and a detached sense of wonder of the alien visitors.
Early in the movie you see him find a shack full of Prawn eggs and he begins unplugging them from their incubators and even hands one of the soldiers a piece of one telling him to keep it as a souvenir. It then shows the shack going up in flames and Wikus laughing as he talks about how the eggs popping sounds like popcorn. It's the childlike innocence with which he laughs off the burning of what are essentially aborted fetuses and the same way he approaches arresting and dealing with any trouble-making Prawn in District 9 that makes you realize that this man is a horrible bastard. I mean come on, even Hitler had the decency to at least hate the people he was oppressing. In fact you even get the impression at several points that Wikus likes the prawn.
This makes Wikus' growth as a character that much more impressive, especially since he has a bad habit of taking 1 step forward and 12 steps back through fear, hatred, or just sheer dickishness. Ultimately you're left with a character you know and respect, perhaps all the more because of what he was when the movie began.
The CG in "District 9" is fucking gorgeous. Sure, it doesn't look perfect but you tell me how to make a six-foot tall alien that looks like a cross between a grasshopper, a Vortigaunt, and Cthulhu look perfect and I'll let you do it.
There were no practical effects used for the aliens or their giant ED-209 robot suit (Seriously, I kept expecting it to go "Drop your weapon. You have 15 seconds to comply") but you sure can't tell it. It seems that the characters onscreen are interacting with the aliens, not with whatever they used as a stand-in. Given the film's shoestring budget, it makes you look at movies like "Starship Troopers 3" and go "Well what's your fucking excuse?"
The storyline sounds a little like your typical ham handed "racism is bad" social allegory, but that's far from the truth. While there is some of that (one part featuring a citizen of Johannesburg saying "If they were from another country we might understand..." dripped of irony) but it's mostly kept to the beginning of the film. Most of the movie is really a story about a weapons company keeping an alien species prisoner just because they want their advanced technology.
Oh sure Wikus gets to walk a mile in the other guy's shoes but that's really just a vehicle to get the audience to understand the prawn and what they deal with. The beauty is it doesn't focus on social allegory and Orwellian government plots, like its spiritual soul mate "Children of Men", "District 9" isn't afraid to get its hands dirty. Explosions, robots, guns that look like something out of "Ratchet and Clank", and a ton of gore it brings in a lot of excitement to the story as well. But what it does even more impressively is balance these two parallels so neither ever seems overbearing to the viewer.
There are a few things that go unexplained like why the prawns were stuck on earth to begin with and why the humans and prawns can understand each other. People get hung up on things like this but honestly they're unnecessary plot points that just make the film more cumbersome and were best left to the imagination.
In a perfect world, this movie would have the same cultural appeal as the original "Star Wars" did when it was released. Of course, I know realistically that that will never happen despite the fact that the movie was disturbingly succesful given that it was low-budget, had no notable faces, a director that had never directed an actual full-length movie, and had a location of South Africa.
Regardless I hope to be seeing more of director Neil Blomkamp and I look forward to seeing Sharlto Copley as "Howling Mad Murdock" in the new "A-Team" movie.
I give "District 9" a 5 out of 5. It's one of the finest science fiction movies I've seen in my life. Buy this shit!
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