An Anti-Hero Is Born

Rating: 9/10 (21 October 2009)

When a giant spaceship surprisingly appears over Johannesburg, the South Africans find that the aliens are famishing in the ship. The entire alien population is brought to a camp in District 9 and the humans realize that the survivors are workers, and the skilled aliens have died. Twenty years later, the camp has become a huge slum and the confined aliens are marginalized and pejoratively nicknamed "Prawns" by the locals. They are explored by the Multi-National United (MNU) Corporation that has interest in their weapons that are activated only by their DNAs, and by the Nigerians that exchange their armament per cat food since they are addicted in this pet food. When the clumsy and intellectually limited family man and MNU employee Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is assigned to evict the aliens to a new camp outside Johannesburg called District 10, he is accidentally exposed to an alien chemical inside a metallic cylinder. Wikus delivers the object to MNU and feels sick; a few hours later one of his hands transforms in alien claw. The MNU brings Wikus to their laboratory to use him as guinea pig in their research, trying to discover how to activate the weapons. Wikus manages to escape from the facility and he is hunted by MNU agents. When he meets the alien Christopher in District 9, he sees the only chance to return to his human form; but the alien needs the fluid in the cylinder confiscated by Wikus to succeed in his attempt to reach the mother ship.
"District 9" is an original sci-fi that uses elements of many other movies like "Transformers", "Independence Day", "Starship Troopers" and works. The aliens look like the "Predator", and despite the location in slums, the special effects are pretty good. The story has an ironic beginning, when the narrator tells that the spaceship appeared not over Manhattan, Washington or Chicago, but over Johannesburg. The idea of the apartheid governs the plot and the writer shows what might happen (actually what happens) to a marginalized community after twenty years of segregation, abandoned by the authorities and living in bad conditions. The awkward Wikus Van De Merwe is the real anti-hero, selfish, stupid, betrayer and taking the wrong decisions most of the time. The story ends with a hook for a sequel. My vote is nine.
Title (Brazil): "Distrito 9" ("District 9")