The summer movie season got off to a good start with Wolverine and Star Trek but quickly fizzled. I was intrigued by the trailer for District 9, which does what a good trailer is supposed to do. It only gives you a taste of what the movie is going to be about, instead of giving away parts of the best scenes. Although I was intrigued, after the disappointment I’ve experienced this summer I wasn’t about to get my hopes up too high. After all, District 9 didn’t have any known actors and only a $30 million budget (GI Joe cost $175 million).
The only thing the movie had going for it on paper was producer Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings). It turns out that District 9 has a lot more going for it than what you see on paper. I left the theater excited by having seen a great movie that exceeded all my expectations.
28 years prior to the beginning of the film, a giant disabled alien spaceship ends up floating right above Johannesburg South
Africa. The aliens on board are sick and transferred to the surface. The aliens are forced to live in a slum called District 9, while the world argues over what to do with them.
In the present day, the aliens live in poverty
with Nigerian gangs. They exchange alien technology/goods for cat food and sneak out of the District to steal from others. The South African population refers to them by the racist term of “prawns”. Scientist have been working unsuccessfully to figure out how to use the alien technology, including their weapons. A private company, MNU, is hired to remove the aliens from their slum to a more remote prison like location. By law they must give the aliens 24 hr notice. While serving notice, the lead MNU field agent, Wikus van der Merwe, is infected with an alien virus while examining an alien device. This infection begins to slowly transform him into one of the aliens. Doctors discover that this transformation allows him to fire alien weapons which are activated by DNA. This makes his body a valuable possession to the military, and permission is granted to kill Wikus and harvest his body parts. Of course, this does not sit well with Wikus, and he manages to escape. He runs to District 9 to find the owner of the device that infected him to seek a cure. The owner is an alien who has been named Christopher Johnson. It turns out Christopher has spent the last 28 years working on an escape plan, but needs the device that infected Wikus to finally execute the plan. The device is now locked up tight at MNU headquarters. Wikus agrees to help get the device back, in exchange for a cure.
Wikus steals some alien weaponry that was being hoarded by a Nigerian gang, and then the film kicks into overdrive. Wikus and his new alien friend Christopher attack MNU headquarters to retrieve the device, which it turns out is fuel. Then they must fend off an all out military assault, and a Nigerian gang assault, when they get back to District 9. What was a serious character driven film turns into a kick-ass action movie for the final act. But all the action has a purpose and I really cared about who was going to live and who was going to die. District 9 brilliantly draws you into the story and makes you care about the characters before blowing you away with the action.
The film has much more going for it than just a famous producer. Most important, it has a great script. It attempts to realistically portray what might happen if about a million aliens ended up stranded on Earth. We see how being forced to live on Earth in poverty with no human education has led to deep rooted racism against what is actually a brilliant alien race. College students could write papers on the parallels between this film and apartheid.
The film also has
Sharlto Copley playing Wikus going for it. He shows us that he is a great actor, even though this is his very first role. His character is well fleshed out, as we see how he relates to his wife and how he is forced to question his racist beliefs about the “prawns”. Although the aliens are mostly special effects, the relationship between Christopher and his son felt very real.
The special effects are seamless. I don’t know how they managed such stellar special effects on a $30 million budget. The final battle is more intense and well done than what I have seen in movies that cost 5 or 6 times as much.
District 9 is a great movie that needs to be seen opening weekend. It’s rare for a movie to exceed my expectations like this one has. It’s probably the best film I’ve seen all year, and should be a contender come Oscar time.
1 comment:
D-9 definitely has a lot going for it -- character development, great acting a at least a few people, awesome alien weapons; it felt a bit preachy at times at different times though
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