District 9 (Movie Review)

Movie Review
District 9
Starring: Sharlto Copley
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
Runtime: 1:52

Every so often the planets align and something amazing happens. Usually this amazing thing is an intense action and/or science fiction movie that has a interesting story with amazing action sequences that doesn’t feel like a brain-dead romp (although sometimes brain-dead romps are incredibly fun). Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 is one of those movies that defy the convention that a movie involving aliens is only intended for a particular group of people. Unfortunately for District 9, the movie suffers from poor filmmaking and other issues that rob what could have been a masterpiece and prevents it from being considered as a contender for top movie of 2009.

Aliens have made contact with humans but leave all your assumptions at the door because this is not your average sci-fi movie. The alien ship arrives and hovers over South Africa. The government sends the army to investigate and they find a million aliens aboard the ship in poor condition. They transport them all down to the surface where attempts to integrate them into society fail. Later they’re forced to live in a giant slum called District 9. Many years pass and the government wants to move them again to a smaller area farther away from the general population.

MNU, the company in charge of this operation puts a man by the name of Wikus van de Merve (Copley) in charge. While taking security forces into the alien slums to have the aliens sign waivers permitting the forced transfer, Wikus gets sprayed by a foreign liquid. He becomes sick and later on finds himself in the hospital where he’s slowly turning into an alien. The government tries to operate on him because his mutated DNA might allow the army to be able to use alien weapons which can’t be used by humans.

Wikus escapes and flees back to District 9. He finds the alien who owned the foreign spray. The alien tells Wikus he can reverse his condition but he can only do that if he can repair his ship to go back to his home planet. The only way that could happen is if they go back to MNU to find the canister that sprayed Wikus since it was the fuel for the ship. With the government and MNU looking for Wikus to finish their experiment and the threat of the army taking down any alien leaving District 9, Wikus and the alien decide that they have no choice but to act.

The film is shot in the style of a documentary for most of it, although later on in the film, it aborts that style permanently except for a couple of small scenes and the final scenes of the movie. It is a bit disorientating considering that the movie switches narrative style but it doesn’t hurt the film that much. The pseudo-documentary part of the movie is very enjoyable and quite well done. It feels like something that could have aired on a news show. The presentation of the movie is a bit on the poor side. Style aside, the movie suffers from poor camera work and editing; especially later on in the film. This isn’t film critic nitpicking here; there are scenes that make you scratch your head and think that the stuff was made by some four year old with Windows Movie Maker. Scenes are cut together with so many jump cuts that even Jean-Luc Goddard would think it was overkill. There are also times where the principal action occurring isn’t the main focus on the screen. It would be interesting if this was done for artistic effect but it comes off more as sloppy filmmaking. Even if it was intentional, when you have intense action scenes, the focus should be on the action, not on areas around the action.

The action though is amazing. It’s very intense and reminds me a bit of Speed in the sense that there is always something. You are never sure what is going to happen as the action is well paced and creates the right amount of suspense. There are major action sequences throughout the movie. There really isn’t any feeling of something being anticlimactic. Every scene builds towards the next. Sometimes action movies go overkill at the beginning so the air is taken out of the rest of the movie no matter how much action there is throughout it. District 9 is sequenced so beautifully that, like Speed, those who don’t normally enjoy action movies will still be on the edge of their seat.

The acting is well done although it’s weird to see most of the secondary characters to be upstaged by a CGI alien (all voiced by Jason Cope). Copley is excellent as the awkward white-collar hard-working husband who is a friendly boss but always willing to do what he’s told by his superiors. His transformation from that to a fearful and desperate man who is trying to cling onto his humanity as it slowly mutates into something alien is remarkable and is definitely not only of the best acting performances of this year but in quite some time. The other human actors play their parts well but Copley outshines all of them. It’s a bit of a problem because he’s so good that they can seem like poor performances as a result. The acting though was perfectly acceptable and no one can be criticized for being too wooden or phoning it in.

The CGI aliens though have an amazing amount of personality. They show more range than most of the human characters in the movie. The main alien, "Christopher Johnson" and his son are incredible. Johnson shows more humanity than most human characters in action movies. His son is so adorable; it’s surprising that they haven’t created toys based on the character. The little alien is cuter than E.T. The animation is very well done and unlike a lot of CGI films, it doesn’t feel like the movie was filmed in front of a bluescreen or the characters were edited in afterwards. The interactions between human actors and the CGI animations are fluid and flawless. Big budget movie producers need to take note, the Michael Bay method of making films should not be practiced. For a movie like this to feel this natural, it shows that movies with CGI based effects can be made well.

Blomkamp’s District 9 is an incredible film. Some might think it’s a film about politics; there is reference to South Africa’s District 6 incident which was about the forced removal of blacks from the District 6 area during the apartheid. Most viewers will never notice this unless they’re up on their South African history. It’s never referenced in the movie. They’ll only notice the incredible storytelling and intense action. The poor filmmaking is very noticeable though and it hurts the movie; especially towards the end of the film. This could have been an instant classic but it feels rushed. It could have definitely served the movie better had they spent more time on developing the movie during post-production.

☆☆☆