Review: District 9 (2009)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                            DISTRICT 9
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Peter Jackson produced this film directed by
     Neill Blomkamp.  When a spaceship brings a large load
     of alien refugees to South Africa, racism becomes
     three-sided.  A government functionary charged with
     relocating the refugee camp finds himself more
     personally involved in the conflict than he expected.
     Blomkamp's and Terri Tatchell's script asks us to
     dissect racism and understand what exactly the rules
     are.  While the film is asking difficult questions,
     it is a first rank piece of science fiction.  When it
     starts to answer those questions in the easiest and
     most predictable ways the film becomes just another
     loud summer action film.  Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

Query: Some large number of alien refugees shows up on Earth
emaciated and needy.  Does society have an obligation to care for
the aliens?  Does society have an obligation to release them freely
into the world?  Is there still an obligation if they have customs
that we consider anti-social?  Is it worse to kill and eat aliens
than to kill and eat earth animals?  Is our first responsibility to
creatures from Earth or to creatures with intelligence?

DISTRICT 9 is an ugly, violent, painful, and intelligent film.  It
delves into racism (or is it species-ism?) in ways that could never
be examined without science fiction.  For as long as the film is
asking questions the film is intelligent.  Sadly, the film runs out
of intelligent questions about at the halfway point and reverts to
being ugly, violent, painful, and sentimental.  That makes for a
long second half.

A large alien mother-ship arrives on Earth and parks itself in the
sky over Johannesburg, South Africa.  Eventually humans come
knocking and discover that Earth's first contact with aliens is
with a ship full of immigrants who need help.  The good-hearted
human race is happy to rescue them and put them into a dirty and
brutal detention camp outside Johannesburg.  There the visitors get
into the predictable sorts of poverty and crime.  The story really
starts as a documentary of the aliens' resettlement to a new camp
further isolated from Earth people.  Wikus Van Der Merwe (played by
Sharlto Copley) is in charge of moving the now nearly two million
aliens (given the insulting name "prawns") to a more remote camp.
At the same time he is rationalizing the action of Multi-National
United for the cameras of a documentary crew.  Not surprisingly
things start to go wrong.  With whites, blacks, and prawns there is
a triangle of racism underlying the film.  In addition there is a
dehumanized government pulling the strings and conflicting with
more humane players.  Wikus has to decide which side has his
loyalty.  Sadly, by this point in the film his decision is
predictable.

Blomkamp does what he can to make the film seem stark and real.  He
subdues the color, which makes the film look a lot like CHILDREN OF
MEN.  He uses a shaky hand-held camera to follow the action.  Often
the action regresses into chaos that the camera with sharp, loud
bangs.  There is some of the feel of an unsubtle Peter Watkins
pseudo-documentary.  Even after the plot starts to twist, there is
a semi-documentary style that follows the action with inserts of
people commenting on the action as if it took place in the past.
The story follows what is in retrospect a very familiar arc.

Though DISTRICT 9 is bleak nearly all the way through, Blomkamp and
Tatchell manage some touches of black humor.  The favorite alien
food is human cat food in a can labeled "Puddy."  Well there is no
accounting for alien taste.  There are little allusions to other
films like THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and INDEPENDENCE DAY.  The
entire situation is reminiscent of ALIEN NATION or perhaps the
"Outer Limits" episode "The Zanti Misfits".  The first half of the
film is first-rate intelligent science fiction.  By the midpoint,
however, the film goes to autopilot and delivers a rather standard
action film that is kind-hearted but uninteresting.  The
combination of maudlin and violent is not a good one.  My
recommendation: skip the second half, but watch the first half
twice.  I rate DISTRICT 9 a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/district_9/>

					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper