Hard-Core Thingies

Rating: 6/10 (12 March 2014)

Seeing District 9 on broadcast TV is a lot like watching the idiotic porn-lite flicks on a movie channel that rhymes with Sinemax. It's embarrassing, but you don't have to see this doodad going into that whatsits, which is the black heart and sick soul of hard-core.
The TV version of this science fiction morality play is a blessing because, if you read about all the stuff the Fox Movie Channel cut out for broadcast, you may thank your lucky starships that you didn't see the hard-core original.
Yet, unlike the spewtacular Starship Troopers--the first movie that comes to mind that has a nausea-factor off the charts--District 9 has a soul. Read between the lines and you see a thinly-veiled criticism of the disastrous effects of shelving unwanted people into refugee camps. Although the moralistic treatment of the subject of where to put more than a million sick and starved extra-terrestrials who have come to Earth is heavy-handed, it is refreshing to see some thought, some cleverness used in what is essentially a "bug-hunt" movie.
Twelve hours after seeing District 9, my passion for it has cooled. I was impressed by the documentarian treatment of the story of a corporate bureaucrat who is given the task of over-seeing the eviction of the "Prawns" from their wretched ghetto. Director Neill Blomkamp carefully reveals a multi-leveled story of the bureaucrat, the corporate baddies who would just love to see what makes the aliens' weaponry tick, the hostility of the humans toward these invaders, and the (pardon me) humanity of the Prawns.
What cooled my passion is what so often happens to heavily-laden CGI flicks and other bug-hunts--as the story works its way into the third reel, we are forced to watch a horror story turn into a gory rescue-mission shootemup. Even with the editing for television, the bodies start stacking up, the blood and brain chunks start coating the lenses, and the viewer (me) begins, once again, that shutting-down sequence that means my emotional bond with the movie is unraveling.
Even though this isn't a Hollywood movie--it's an indie from South Africa--District 9 collapses into just another pool of red and black blood because, I guess, it's expected. Why force the audience to keep thinking all the way through a movie when you can cut to the bullet and ray-gun ridden chase?
We all knew it was coming. Why complain?
Blomkamp even throws in some Spielbergish tugging of heartstrings by showing the lead alien grieving over his loss of hope, his son, and the discovery of medical experiments being performed on the Prawns. It's a bad sign when a bit of computer flimflammery can show more emotion than most of the humans running around. I swear, if I saw this in a theatre, I would have bet that there would have been somebody--or somebodies-- mewling "aahhh's" when the camera captures the grief on "Christopher's" face.
In District 9, an attempt to turn the monster-movie on its head by making the aliens very, very human would have worked if the humans making the movie hadn't lowered their bar by saying, "Sorry folks, you're too dumb to get the social commentary here. Have some brain chunks with your popcorn."
Mmm, tastes like cat food!