A racist movie about racism?

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2009)

First lets deal with the basic storyline. Basically its a story about aliens which are stuck on earth due to some spaceship malfunction. They are lead to live a miserable life in South African ghettos as refuges. The movie is shot in a documentary style. We enter the movie at the moment our main character Wikus is put in charge of the evacuation of the aliens into what resemble concentration camp because the South African population are tired of them and their behaviour. While promoted as a apartheid allegory, where black people were put into reserve by white colonialist. It bear some important differences, since here it is the aliens "invaders" which are being oppressed by the native population while during apartheid it was the invaders (colonialist) which were oppressing the native population on their own land. I would say the allegory is a mix between apartheid and Jewish immigration in Europe/Germany before the war.
I think the basic story is good, but thats were things goes downhill a bit. Nothing intelligent is done about this apartheid/Nazi allegory. I have to say this because this movie is taunted as intelligent sci-fi which its not. But personally I also like action/scifi so by itself thats not a problem to me. Unfortunately I found the rest of the movie pretty boring. Not much is really happening.
The story is: While evacuating the aliens to the concentration camp our hero Wikus is contaminated with some Aliens fluid then begin to slowly morph into one of them "The Fly"-style. But during the whole movie he stays basically human with an alien arm.
When the government learn about his metamorphoses. They are ready to kill him and nurture his organ for some research. He escapes, meet an alien which tell him can turn him back to being 100% human. They get back into the research center together to steal back the fluid to help the alien escape the planet earth (with the help of Wikus at the last moment). At the end the Alien promises to come back to turn Wikus into an human again. I guess he will come back to get his people too.
While I'm a big fan of Sci-fi including action sci-fi. I found this movie most boring. Simply because there's not much going on. Its basically a escape and run movie.
But what struck me, since this movie is presented as a Apartheid allegory, its how the author Neill Blomkamp seem to not have dealt with his own prejudice toward black/African people. There are a few aspects which make this movie racist. There's the racist portrayal of gangster-flesh eating-Nigerians. Perpetuating the myth of the cannibal native. Natives believing foolishly that eating aliens flesh will give them power. No black person in this movie, set up on South Africa of all places, have any kind of significant role. Its like this movie is set up during the apartheid years, well maybe it is since no African people seem to have any leadership role. All a bit surprising when its a movie *about* racism. Then there's the little thing as black people seemingly showed to be the most racist toward the aliens. Or the aliens themselves being showed in such a unfavorable light that its almost understandable to put them into concentration camp. But I'll take it as a critic of the racist white South African press during apartheid years since the movie is shot in a documentary style. A white invader press which had to propagate myth and fake propaganda to justify the colonization, segregation and racism. And thats the only angle we see of those aliens. Wikus do meet a sympathetic alien, but unfortunately this alien seem presented to be the only one of his kind. As no other aliens are presented into a good light (do they have family values, life aspirations, dream, etc??). Alien are also presented as people which are not able to help themselves, thus need to be saved by the white man. There's no alien leaders, no Mandela or Soweto uprising here. Overall, the movie should have taken much better care since its a movie about racism and apartheid.
In overall humanity is presented as being very evil. While its completely unrealistic considering the specific situation of the movie. For what we see in the movie, it seem there was no effort whatsoever by the human to communicate with them or to know them better. Hell, we could have help them make that damn fluid so they could go back home!! I'll also take it as a critic of the apartheid regime beyond its lapse in logic (we would never treat aliens that way in similar circumstances).
The movie movie storyline was pretty boring, with not much happening. Escape running, that's it. Some lapse in logic here and there as to why the aliens don't use their own weapons for example. The technological backwardness of the alien (coming from a highly advance spaceship with robot weapon). Still worth a 6 (without considering the racist undertone which was hopefully unconscious). While no philosophical point was discussed somehow I wish the movie writer would have dealt with his own prejudice toward African/black people before tackling the issue of racism in a movie.