Quite an achievement

Rating: 10/10 (26 August 2009)

This is a great action sci-fi movie. It's suspenseful as you don't know where the story is going. Because of the way it's shot and edited, it's pace is quick and it doesn't dwell on slow moments. It has great battle scenes, interesting weapons, curious creatures, and teases us with only a few glimpses of the alien world.
While I'm easily annoyed by political agendas disguised as entertainment, the themes here lend themselves to various interpretations, not just the standard one about race that perhaps the writer had in mind. You can think of it in terms of the universal rotten human nature, or in terms of the animalistic will to dominate, or in terms of a post-9/11 militarized global agenda, of the complete integration of the military industrial complex with government and with the media, or the absurd obsession with weapons and the black market it fosters.
This is the kind of movie that could have never been made in the US or handled in any way by Americans. Were this an American movie it would be full of Wagner-plagiarized orchestration, it would be offensively moralizing and condescending, the casting would have to fulfill bizarre quotas, a love story would occupy half of the time. Instead we get an action movie that is often funny, surprising, and no-nonsense.
The special effects are outstanding. I was surprised to read that it's all CGI. It is rather humorous to watch aliens misbehaving pettily just the way humans do. The acting is good, although I suspect that the writer is to blame for the excessive portrayal of the main character's nerdyness. At some point several people are getting geared up for action and our main character, who looks like the guy from Revenge of the Nerds, has a giant calculator and pens in chestpockets over a bulletproof vest. I'm not sure the story is entirely solid. The more one thinks about it, the more holes one may find so it's best to just go with what we are given and not ask about what isn't said.
Still, despite minor shortcomings, this movie is destined to a classic and I wouldn't mind sequels.