Surprisingly quite good.

Rating: 6/10 (5 June 2012)

District 9 is set in Johannesburg in South Africa where a huge alien mother ship hovers above the city, after entering the ship which seems unable to leave a million alien creatures are discovered & brought down to Earth & kept in a slum like area known as District 9. Human feeling against the aliens which become nicknamed Prawns grow in the city & the Government hire an outside security company named MNU, or the Multi National United, to evict the alien Prawns & move them outside the city limits away from the human population into another slum like camp. The sheepish Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Coley) is put in charge of the operation, while trying to move some Prawns from their shack Wikus is sprayed in the face by some black fluid hidden by the Prawns & soon begins to undergo a change, his arm starts to turn into an alien claw & his whole DNA structure begins to change. The men in power want Wikus because he can operate the alien weaponry which relies on alien DNA to activate it but the aliens want the fluid back so they can go back home while all Wikus wants to be be human again...
This American, New Zealand, Canadian & South African co-production was co-written & directed by Neill Blomkamp & was a big success when it was released, a somewhat surprise success too since District 9 as has already been said is the complete opposite of what Hollywood suits appear to think what is required to be successful. The fact that it has no big names, it has no-one attached with any proved track record, it has a first time director, a leading actor who has never been in a full length film before, it is set completely outside the US with all the actor's speaking in foreign accents & it deals with moral issues in a thoughtful yet still entertaining way. The simple fact that District 9 is a good film probably had a lot to do with it though, & to be fair I think it is although it's maybe not the classic that some make it out to be. From the big budget sci-fi action blockbuster angle there's plenty of aliens, explosions, fights & action to satisfy that section of the audience although it's not perfect like if that alien could operate the mother ship at the end why couldn't it at the start before they were all placed in District 9? How could it have kept that spaceship concealed under his shack? Where did all the alien weapons come from? The alien don't seem particularly intelligent enough to have created all that technology so where did it come from? However District 9 has obvious parallels to real world events, in fact writer & director Blomkamp has said that District 9 was inspired by his time in South Africa during apartheid & you can easily replace the alien Prawns with many ethnic minorities now that face persecution in certain parts of the world & the script does a good job of making the situation & events as they unfold seem fairly believable & credible. At just under two hours long the film flew by & I was quite emerged in the story.
Filmed in large parts like a documentary complete with interviews & such District 9 has a sort of new report feel to it, luckily Blomkamp decides to keep the shaky hand-held camcorder crap to a minimum & you can always tells what's going on. Add that to security camera style footage & additional Hollywood set-pieces & District 9 has a unique yet natural feel to ti that works surprisingly well & is never too distracting. The CGI computer effects are very good actually, from the aliens themselves to the huge mother ship constantly hovering above the city to the robotic suit that Wikus wear at the end. A full length feature film remake of the Niell Blomkamp short Alive in Joburg (2006).
With a supposed budget of about $30,000,000 this had decent money spent on it & I though it was a lower budgeted independent film rather than a big studio one. Actually film in Johannesburg in South Africa. Although District 9 was nominated for four Oscars back in 2010 it didn't win any of them. The acting is very good from all involved.
District 9 is a great sci-fi action thriller with obvious real life political & social parallels & while it's not perfect it's a good way to pass a couple of hours. Better than I had expected for sure.