Shenanigans & Tomfoolery

I’m a huge fan of aliens and science fiction so I was immediately interested in director Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 when I saw its first trailer (which I’ve embedded at the end of this post) many months ago. The trailer itself was so vague that I didn’t really know what the movie was about which naturally made me even more curious. Plus, I can’t say no to a great spaceship design. I kept the movie in the back of my head and made no effort to follow up on it online, always knowing that I’d see it upon release. Well, the movie is out, and I saw it (after many failed attempts) and here’s what  I think about it.

Potential spoilers after the break.

To put it simply, I really enjoyed it. It’s difficult to pigeonhole District 9 into any one genre or category. It’s kind of a science fiction, action movie with a slight political subtext on prejudice, immigration and weapons profiteering shot documentary style.

Being set in Africa, which is something not too often seen in Hollywood (much less science fiction), the setting works for the movie and gives it a much different dynamic and visual quality right from the start. It paints a picture of first contact that is vastly different to what we’re used to seeing in movies and a good chunk of time is spent at the beginning of the film as Blomkamp tries to establish just how much the arrival of extraterrestrials can realistically affect human society. This is done in a fairly believable way via the aforementioned documentary style footage. This opening sequence effortlessly weaves into the movie’s actual plot but it’s still a bit too long and over-expository.

I think believability and how serious you can take the subject matter is important for any film, but more so for a movie like this. Thankfully, main character Wikus Van Der Merwe succeeds in being a flawed, uncaring, selfish and, later due to circumstance, desperate man. In other words, a real, believable human being. His disregard for the lives of the aliens and brutal acts of violence just make his character arc so much stronger that you really want him to succeed in his plight by the end of the movie.

Aside from a scene that seemed a little too much of an action movie cliché with two heavily armed underdogs storming a high security facility (I almost gave up on the movie at this point), little in the movie is thrown in there haphazardly. A lot of the stuff that you think is inconsequential has a pay off and this all leads to an amazing 3rd act which more than makes up for the earlier, slower parts of the movie. We get all-out action, we get character arcs come full circle and we get a great ending along with a tease of things to come and the political subtext never, ever gets preachy. You really can’t ask for much more.

District 9 had its ups and downs but it succeeds in many regards. Its biggest quality to me however, is how it managed to bring  something fresh to the table. It’s well worth your money and it’s absolutely worth seeing. It’s not a perfect science fiction movie but hey, we only get a Space Odyssey or a Blade Runner about once every couple decades it seems.