Original and exciting, avoid if have fear of shrimp

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2010)

It happens all too often where aliens invade the Earth violently, with vastly superior technology and intents to harvest, destroy or both. There's very few that humanize these invaders in a non-cliché way. And here's one that humanizes the aliens as blue-collar workers entering our xenophobic lifestyle. By paralleling human discrimination, District 9 is actually one of the best sci-fi movies to come out in a long time.
The plot of District 9 purposely mirrors the Apartheid rule of South Africa. A bunch of aliens crash in Johannesburg, discovered to be blue-collar workers and moved out of their mothership in what initially seems to be a humanitarian move. The settlement they are given, however, quickly becomes a slum known as district 9. A private interest group known as MNU oversees district 9, but appears to have other interests, namely in the advanced weaponary aboard the ship. Nigerian gangsters take advantage of the "prawns", trading cat food (which the aliens love) for weapons, although they are unable to use them. Their solution is to, of course, eat the prawns to gain their power.
Due to the conditions of district 9 (ie being so close to the regular people), MNU decides to move the aliens to district 10, further out of the city. The task is left to Wikus van der Merwe (Copley), a mild-mannered office worker who just happens to be connected through his father-in-law. While serving notices, he finds a suspicious canister in the house of the alien "Christopher Johnson", and is sprayed by it.
What happens next really shouldn't be spoiled, but suffice to say things don't go well for Wikus after this. The exact effect of the spray is almost laughable at first (a fine case of applied phlebotnium, a magical substance that does whatever the plot requires it to do), but it services the plot quite excellently. But really, alien fluid? C'mon.
Wikus himself is a truly excellent character. While never as nasty or fully aware as his superiors, he is far from completely sympathetic. He threatens poor Christopher in an extremely evil way involving his son. He views the aliens as a pest. He aborts a group of alien children by fire without a second thought. He is the definition of asshole protagonist. It is a tribute to Copley's excellent performance that we are completely aware of this yet still sympathize with him at the end.
The true hero of the story is Christopher Johnson, the prawn with the plan. His reaction to discovering the experimentation of MNU is one of justified rage, but usually he is logical and mild-mannered. The same cannot be said of the other prawns. They earn they're reputation often, although not usually unprovoked. I'm glad the aliens weren't glorified as "pure beings", but perhaps they could've standed to have more than two sympathetic characters. Christopher's son CJ is also a little too Hollywood-cute for a shrimp-looking alien.
There are three distinct acts to the movie. The introduction, which has a very well done mockumentary feel to it. The change to traditional narrative by the second act is impressively subtle. The conspiracy of the second act lets way to traditional sci-fi blow-stuff-up by the third act. Its a little intellectually disappointing that this route was chosen, but at the same time, I'll be damned if it isn't awesome on so many levels. Let's just say more heads explode than in any more ever before, and a man is killed by a flying pig carcass. And all on a relatively small budget. Bravo indeed. Unfortunately, the trailer steals away a lot of the suspense from these sequences.
Now for some random thoughts too small for their own paragraph: The bad guys are maybe a little too two-dimensional, showing no real moral dilemma. This is acceptable for badass Colonel Koobus, one of the slimiest sci-fi bad guys ever, but a little more humanity would have been nice. The soldiers also suffer from the stormtrooper effect to a ridiculous degree, getting wasted like candy. The alien weaponary seemed far too advanced for a ship of worker bees, and I feel it should have been more comparable in power to human weaponary. But it was still really cool.
Even though it loses some respect in the last act, that last act IS ridiculously cool. The extremely original and refreshingly low-budget feel of the entire movie warrants a must-see status among sci-fi lovers, and film lovers in general. More exciting than most blockbusters out there right now and more thought-provoking than most dramas, District 9 is highly recommended.