How do you keep a good alien down?
Fly into his mothership with a virus? Strangle him with your slave chain?
…Take away his Reese’s Pieces?
Wrong, according to ”District 9”. The correct reply would be to round them all up and place them into a refugee camp under horrible conditions.
The film chronicles, documentary style, the efforts of the MNU (Multi-National Unit) to relocate 1.5 million aliens (nicknamed “prawns” for their appearance) to a new refugee camp.
Two decades ago a huge mothership descended over a major world city. Any guesses where? New York? Washington? London? Paris? Nope.
Johannesburg, South Africa. After cutting into the ship, authorities find hundreds of thousands of aliens, diseased and starving. What to do with them all? The whole world’s watching.
Enter the refugee camp. Prawns are forced into ramshackle huts and corrugated tin shacks, forced to eke out the lifestyle of beggars, petty thieves, and the like.
As a result, South African citizens grow tired of their presence and pressure the government to move them farther away from the city. Enter the MNU, an international humanitarian company (among other things). They have a plan (sound frakking familiar?).
Leading the relocation is Wikus Van der Merwe (perfectly played by newcomer actor Sharlto Copley), an MNU middle manager suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the man chosen to direct the Prawn relocation. Things are not all they seem in the District, and Wikus is suddenly confronted with something no one ever thought was possible. As a result, Wikus is forced to make choices that test his very humanity, from the small decisions (cat food, anyone?) to the global.
This film is rife with political and social commentary. How do you deal with a race (human or otherwise) that so many of your people deem “undesiarable”. Can you use such a race to foster your own goals?
Well, I don’t want to delve into the movie too much, as it’s hard to do without giving away significant plot.
The great thing about “D9” is that it doesn’t go the way you think it should, the twists are quite clever.
“District 9” is a must-see for any sci-fi genre fan. More mainstream movie goers may find the pacing a bit slow in spots, but both audiences will find the acting superb and the look and feel of the movie compelling. This movie feels real. It’s akin to the feeling I got while watching “Cloverfield”. The characters are very simply outlined, but you find a depth in them as you apply your own sense of reality to what they’re going through. In that way, these two films create their own subset of the sci-fi genre, call it “reality sci-fi” if you will.
I liked the fact that they set the movie in a “third world” country. It gives the film a sense of naivete and innocence, and contributes to that realistic tension and sensitivity.
Bottom Line - “District 9” is a fantastic sci-fi genre film that has something that should appeal to everyone.
Rating out of 10: 9 (no mathematical pun intended)
