District 9 Movie 2009 Review– “District 9“is a science-fiction film to come out all year.It has a robust story, well-drawn characters, emotional, superb action, and solid direction and will keep you interested from beginning to end.
The story takes place 20 years after an extraterrestrial ship has stalled just outside of — or rather, above — Johannesburg, South Africa. Two decades later, the hapless aliens live in walled-off, brutally poor ghettos.
It’s an ugly situation for everyone. The aliens, who look like skinny crustaceans and are dubbed “prawns” by disgusted humans, live on offal and get high off cat food. Policemen keep their boots firmly on the backs of these creatures’ collective necks.
But then one entity — a multinational conglomerate or government agency, it’s hard to tell them apart these days — decides there’s money in that alien technology. And the key seems to lie in the alien DNA. Cue the Army and the nasty doctors in white lab coats.
It’s all vaguely “X-Files.” What director Neil Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell have done, though, is tell this story with a bias toward the aliens.
The story is told through the eyes of Wikus (Sharlto Copley), a corporate bureaucrat who’d make one of Ricky Gervais’ bumbling characters look competent. A mass of blithe bigotry and squirming obsequiousness, Wikus only wants to go along to get ahead. So when his father-in-law appoints him head of a round-up-the-prawns operation, Wikus is happy not to ask questions. But when a freak accident begins turning him into a prawn, too, all order disappears.
“District 9″ originated as a 2005 Blomkamp short film called “Alive in Joburg,” and it sometimes shows the signs of its growing pains. Its mix of documentary and straight feature styles is jarring. So are the rather large gaps in the plot and a failure to create contrasting characters.
Many films struggle to include one memorable villain; this picture has too many. The aliens are crude and ugly and savage. The Nigerian gangsters who prey on them are bloodthirsty sadists. And the South Africans are mostly cruel bigots.
It’s difficult to care who wins, but we spend so much time with Winkus that we eventually throw our lot in with him. He’s a worm, sure, but at least he eventually turns, and maybe even turns into a vertebrate in the process.
What powers “District 9,” really, is the images and the action and the effects. (Blomkamp, not surprisingly, cut his teeth in commercials.) The steaming backdrop of shantytowns is a novel one; the armored tanks and alien blasters are impressive. And so, of course, are the segmented creatures themselves. But don’t be surprised if the final drag-out, over-the-top fight reminds you of a smarter, better “Transformers 2,” full of giant robo-monsters and very loud noises.
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