Apartheid rehashed.

Rating: 6/10 (15 August 2009)

District 9 is certainly not what I expected. Hoping for another action packed, effects laden, edge of your seat sci-fi epic, I was sorely disappointed. Even scenes from the previews implied that there might be some kind of intense confrontation on a grand scale between humans and aliens. Instead, we are again being lectured, better yet indoctrinated, as to what's proper and what isn't. It was like sitting through the remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still all over again. The theme of "man is bad" is really starting to wear thin. How many more seminars on politically correct behavior is the movie industry going to have us sit through?
Nearly the first half of the film is told in a "you are there" perspective like "Cops", hand-held camera and all. We accompany security forces as they raid a squalid ghetto in Johannisburg, South Africa and begin evicting the alien residents who came to Earth some twenty years ago. Humanity has grown intolerant of them and they are to be resettled in a new and improved concentration camp. The aliens of course resist and are gunned down at the slightest provocation.
Sharlto Copley stars as Wikus van der Merwe, the head of the conglomerate MNU's security forces. He is assigned the task of cleaning out the alien ghetto and we see from the start that it is a job beyond his capabilities. He stumbles, fumbles and bumbles and eventually is exposed to a fuel the aliens have been synthesizing for the last twenty years. He immediately begins to mutate into an alien and of becomes the target of a huge manhunt, so now the tables are turned.
This reminded me of Vic Morrow's scene in Twilight Zone the Movie where he faces the Ku Klux Klan. Van der Merwe is now dependent on the aliens for his survival. As the film reaches it's conclusion, the pace does pick up. There are shoot outs, crashing spaceships and great CGI effects. The alien ship which has hung menacing above the city for decades leaves Earth and Wikus completes his transformation.
Another big problem for American audiences is the fact that the cast are all unfamiliar faces. Their accents and speech is so Afrikaaner, that subtitles are used even when they're speaking English. There is nothing unique or original here. The movie is like "Cops" meets "Alien Nation". The special effects are superb but alas are wasted on such a trivial, mind numbing endeavor.