District 9

In April, my boss took me to a conference and in this conference, all of the movie studios were presenting footage of their upcoming summer release to give theater owners an idea for marketing and just to show theater owners was the summer movie season would look like. When the conference was over, they showed us Star Trek. Naturally when it was all over, I wanted to tell everyone about Star Trek, but after the conversations about Star Trek, the next thing I wanted to tell everyone about was this little movie called District 9. We saw a trailer, a whole scene, and a little behind the scenes video. I was completely hooked. From that moment I started to anticipate this movie with great excitement. When they showed the entire movie at Comic-Con and the reviews were so good and after witnessing the brilliant marketing campaign, I was way too excited for my own good, which can always lead to problems.

20 years ago, an alien spaceship started hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa. After it lingered there for a few months, Humans worked their way into the ship to see what was going on and what they found were thousands of malnourished aliens. Humanitarian efforts went into effect, but humans and aliens could not get along, and soon the aliens were banished to these ghettos, or districts. Called "Prawns", these ugly bug like aliens do not seem to have world domination on their brains, but they have weapons that humans cannot use and as the aliens are unknown they are scary to the human race. The action picks up with Multi-National United (MNU), a private corporation, being tasked with moving all of the aliens, yet again, but this time even further away from the city because it makes the city look dirty and gross and people have lost patience with the aliens and how unclean they are. The documentary style camera is following the leader of the task force, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) as he gets ready to go out and get the aliens to sign a form to move. He is a clueless guy, who would never, in a real world situation be put in charge of such a dangerous task, but this is a movie after all. The aliens are not excited about moving, yet again, there is some blood shed and eventually, Van Der Merwe gets into an alien household and starts investigating a weird liquid until it shoots out all over him and his life changes forever.

The whole movie is shot in this weaving, unstable documentary style, with weird zooms, which is starting to be common and it can be a very striking style of film making when used properly. In District 9, it is used to varying degrees of success. The best thing about it, it how the aliens look with this style of shooting. We are used to alien movies being these massive spectacles shot in crystal clear ways that let us know we are, indeed, watching a fantasy. When you shoot them all low-tech and in sometimes grainy footage, It is a bit jarring because it makes the aliens more real. And as ugly as they are, it really makes you want them to not be real. However, the camera work gets a little annoying in the third act, when you kind of want the action to be more stationary so you can really get into the action. The opening 15 minutes of news footage and grainy homemade footage is a very nice, interesting way to deal with a whole mess of exposition, but it does not hide the fact, that the entire first 20 minutes is nothing but exposition and paying attention to the exposition is important if you want to fully connect this movie to its allegorical properties.

I have read reviews that have claimed District 9 is "The most important Sci-Fi movie of the decade" and countless reviews have called it "smart", but is it really that smart? I mean, the allegorical properties are a nice touch, but by being so overtly obvious, it is not really that interesting of a move. It is set in South Africa, so what could the movie possibly be about? I wonder? Then, the movie proves it really wants to be an action movie by giving in to the action wholeheartedly in the final third of the movie. I do not want to diminish the premise and some of the nice ideas that exist about how we, as humans, want to keep others down by keeping them in ghettos and that the ghettos of the world are driven by drugs, violence and disgusting prostitution, but when the final 45 minutes are spent just exploding people everywhere, can a movie really be that smart?

As for the action and for the exploding bodies, well, there the movie soars! With a 37 million dollar budget, everything should be a little off, but the movie is immaculate looking in terms of effects. When you compare the effects of this little movie to the 175 million dollar disaster of G.I. Joe, it makes you hate G.I. Joe just a bit more. Or when you compare the effects of this 30 something million dollar movie to the 30 something million dollar Twilight, it shows that when you have the right team, budgetary limitations do not have to lead to crappy effects. Not only do the aliens look incredible (well, incredibly disgusting), but the Robocop inspired suit, and Robocop inspired climax are all wonderful looking and the suit moves well and the gun blasts all look great and and watching people explode never gets old, because of how good it all looks.

District 9 is a great movie, but it was not what it was billed as. There are annoying things to get through, like an alien named Christopher Johnson, or that the evil alien becomes the hero by giving him a son. That is a little trite. Then there is the gross out factor. Yes, the aliens are gross looking, but the Fly like transformation is truly disgusting and definitely reeks of Peter Jackson's influence. Now, Peter Jackson's influence is not a bad thing. This first time feature director did lose the Halo movie, but District 9 looks great because of the almost Halo movie and because Peter Jackson believes in this young South African director and to have Jackson in your corner does not suck.

Perhaps my expectations clouded my ability to just enjoy District 9, but I still think it is a great movie and worth seeing. I wish it had been about 10 minutes shorter and wish it had been paced a bit more evenly, but there are two really great action sequences and the climatic action scene is totally kick ass. Getting through all of the exposition is a bit tedious, and I am not sure it was all necessary for such a contained story, that does not do a lot to involve the grander scale of alien life once the first 25 minutes end. If you get joy out of watching people explode, or seeing how good the effects of a 37 million dollar can be, I totally recommend District 9, because it does not disappoint in the action department.

Final Grade: B