Critic's Grade: A-

Oh great, another movie thrown together by clueless, unimaginative Hollywood hacks to profit off of what used to be a great TV show. Or yet another insipid rehash of an old horror movie. Or a pointless shot-by-shot remake of a revered film. Hollywood ain’t much for originality these days. Which makes it all the more amazing that a movie like “District 9” even exists. Somebody took a big chance with this picture, and they deserve an equally big pat on the back. Actually, given how well the movie is doing at the box office, they’re probably patting themselves on the back.

“District 9” is one of the most original films I’ve seen in years. Original doesn’t always equal good (see “Southland Tales” for a perfect example), but in this case, it equals excellent. “District 9” is inventive, action-packed, relentless, beautiful, and thought-provoking.

Director Neill Blomkamp, whose resume mostly includes music videos, was originally the director chosen for “Halo”. Work was well underway with that movie when an inter-studio squabble caused the rug to be pulled out from under him. Peter Jackson (who was producing “Halo”) and his partner and collaborator Fran Walsh convinced the depressed director to push on, do his own thing, and show Hollywood what they missed out on. Boy, did he ever.

“District 9” is beautiful to watch, even as the camera pans over desolate, trash-strewn slums. For an action/sci-fi film, it’s always remarkably bright; not much in the movie ever really happens at night. In a way, that makes it more realistic, and decidedly non-Hollywood. Because in your standard Hollywood flicks, well…everything bad happens at night, right?

The movie picks up 28 years after the aliens have come to our planet. They didn’t mean to come to earth, their ship simply ran out of gas, right above Johannesburg, South Africa. All they want to do is go home, but all we want to do is keep them here, for one reason: weapons. Their weapons are keyed to their DNA, and scientists still haven’t figured out how to get around that little nuisance. As for the hundreds of stranded aliens, they’re corralled in slums, an area known as “District 9”. After all, they don’t speak English, can’t hold a job, can’t contribute to our Earthling society (except for the weapons our governments want), so they’re unceremoniously dumped into cobbled-together shacks and forced to fend and forage for themselves. They’re referred to as “prawns”, ostensibly for their appearance, but I wonder if that name has deeper meaning, since prawns are bottom-feeders. That’s the way all of the humans in the movie perceive them, as well. No one is sympathetic to them.
Finally, it’s decided to oust the growing alien population from District 9, and relocate them farther away from “Jo-burg”. The task to evict the aliens falls to Multi-National United, a company contracted by the government, and given the dubious honor of heading this job is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley). Wikus seems like a good guy; he’s married to a beautiful wife, and he’s the son-in-law of one of the heads on MNU, so this is his chance to prove himself to his father-in-law (who seems to regard his son-in-law as lacking a spine). Wikus, is funny, talkative, easy-going, and likable. However, his attitude towards the aliens is the same as everyone else’s. He treats them with complete distain, and shows them no more respect than he would a flea. The movie really puts him through his paces, after he comes into contact with a mysterious substance inside one of the alien’s shacks, that changes his life for good. Then we see the real Wikus come out. Is that good or bad? I won’t spoil it, but chances are he’ll surprise you (for better or worse) more than once.

It should be noted that Copley is a director and producer. Prior to this, he had only acted in exactly one movie. Blomkamp, his friend, talked him into playing Wikus. I mention this because it makes his performance all the more remarkable, because it is nothing short of stellar. Copley has a natural gift for acting, and he also improvised the majority of his dialogue, which makes his performance that much more believable.

The first half of the movie is shot in an almost documentary-style, where scenes switch between news broadcasts, interviews, and a camera crew following Wikus as he attempts to evict the aliens. Don’t let that scare you. Blomkamp edits it all so perfectly that the pace of the movie never flags, and it never strays off course. It actually serves up the remainder of the movie. Some people are spoken about in past tense, but you’re never sure exactly what happens to them. As one interviewee ominously intones “I just want everyone watching right now to learn from what has happened.” But what happened? You don’t know. Not yet.
The second half strays from this set-up and is presented more straight-forward, as events slowly ramp up and everything comes to its inevitable conclusion.

The special effects in the movie are spectacular, and it blows my mind that a movie this first-rate was made on a paltry $30 million. Yep, you read that right. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Peter Jackson put his WETA team at Blomkamp’s disposal (the same team responsible for the FX on “The Lord of the Rings” movies and the Jackson’s version of “King Kong”). But still….$30 million is still $30 million. Then again, “LOTR” was also made on the cheap, at least when you put it in the perspective of how grand the FX were in that 3-movie series.

The aliens look fantastic. They’re entirely CGI, but they don’t look CGI, except in a couple of quick, rapid moments. Even then, they just look more blurry (as in fast-moving) than anything. Up close, they look like you could reach through the screen and touch them. Something about their look almost bothered me the first time I saw them in the trailers, and I figured out what it is: the aliens look like throwbacks to old, 50s and 60s-era sci-fi movies, with their crustacean appearance, the big eyes, and long antennae. But they look so real that it doesn’t matter. After a while, they grow on you. Plus, they aren’t your standard blood-thirsty or body-snatching aliens; they behave like us. You’ll probably chuckle the first time you see one wearing a basketball jersey and cap (like I did). And since they effectively have a “shell” covering their body, what do they do? Some of them like to graffiti themselves. (Like you wouldn’t.) The alien “star” of the movie, Christopher (of course we give them “human” names…we can’t pronounce theirs) is a great character himself, who only wants to pack up his things, including his kid, and get back home. In many ways, he acts more “human” (or at least “human” as us humans would like to think of ourselves) than virtually anyone else in the movie.

The alien weapons’ effects are also incredible – no ray beams or lasers here. They do some cool stuff (in wet, juicy, gory fashion). The “battlesuit” that figures in so prominently towards the end is incomparably awesome. It’s not so much what it looks like, or does, but how it’s presented and depicted.

Obviously, you could draw all the comparisons to apartheid that you want, and Blomkamp (who grew up in South Africa) is never heavy-handed about this message, but it’s there. For me though, it made the movie feel that much more real when it made me think, “If humans treat our own kind so horribly, how would we treat an alien civilization?”

All Reviews by Lawson Heath Wright
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