"The name is Plissken ... 'P R A W N' Plissken!"

Rating: 7/10 (24 April 2010)

This (in "Blairwitch"-tradition) documentary-alike motion picture tells a story, loosely reminding of the James Caan-movie "Alien Nation" but set in the townships of Johannesburg/South Africa.
The basic premise is that a couple of years ago above the city an alien flying saucer came to halt and the crew stranded here. They couldn't get the wrecked rig afloat anymore so they were deported into a slum at the edge of town, in the following the "regular alienation" gets replaced by "average apartheid" (insert irony here). The status of the colored southafricans in the film apparently switched with the arrival of the aliens and they also fall in in the racistic patterns which they themselves suffered through for centuries. This may be basically a realistically portrayed mechanism: for instance if you enter a train-compartment were already 3 other passengers sit for a while, you are the "disturbing newbie" and it's something you can even feel. When the next one comes in, your status gets passed on automatically.
The viewer accompanies a bureaucrat from the Joha-municipal authorities and some soldiers and police-squads into the ghetto to hand over and execute an eviction for the mockingly called "Prawns". The aliens already work in hide over a plot to escape and/or set their sails again, a suspicious reagent is the stuff to go. The bureaucrat –actually a harmless guy on the edge to marriage- is the poor guy to get sip of it; after that his well-sorted life turns into a kafkaesque metamorphosis, where he is forced to change sides, gets hunted by his own authorities and his own father-in-law who administrates the martial show and who anyway didn't like him too much in the first place.
Actually it would have been the more revolutionary movie, if it was shot 20 years earlier but fascistic ideologies even after being removed have a long fallout among many people so maybe it's even today enough up on current events (I live in Germany so I guess I can tell).
Regardless, this is an excellent and highly entertaining movie with a nice b-picture-appeal, good actors and FX and an inventive premise – no revolution but very well!
Facutally it's the kind of movie John Carpenter would have been doing in the 80s. There's a strong connection to "They Live" and the dystopic, satirical aspects of "Escape from NY", also regarding the apparently relatively low budget and the dramatical consequence, this flick plays very much in the same league. After watching this, it's once more unclear, why Carpenter couldn't continue to fulfill the standards he himself had set 'til then. Obviously others can do excellent.