CONTAINS SPOILERS- I really liked it, stop reading reviews and go see it.

Rating: 10/10 (9 September 2009)

I saw this last week and thought it was great. It is not a deep message movie, but it speaks out of recent history in South Africa (as I understand it) gives it an alien twist, and puts it on the world stage for us all to identify with. As well as having heaps of action, cool weapons, lots of blood, a peculiar kind of dark humour and great acting. It is not preachy or anything, it is a would be blockbuster, but it has this background that it plays off. I think the film is something people from that country can be very proud of.
I want to say some things about it in terms of what some people who are not so enthusiatic have said. One is that it starts off as a kind of mock documentary and they seem to think it should have stayed in the same vein, and focused around things to do with the shanty towns and exploring that "social issues" side of the premise, and that it loses its way in turning into an action movie. My view is that the action is aimed at the huge alien ship, which is a symbol of transformative power. If the aliens can use their ship again that is like when white minority rule ended for South Africa, it's entirely in keeping with the allegory at the start of the film. In fact it is the only game in town. The action part of the film involves pain trauma and confusion for Vicus. He acts mainly out of his own self interest and fear, he becomes altruistic very very late in the film, probably the last 5 minutes. The fear of his transforming body reflects into this as an allegory of the pain of loss of power and control. All of this plays well with an allegory of loss of political power. But the thing is it plays like ripping good action as he goes from threat to threat, you are not meant to think deeply, but it means the film has a soul through that section, unlike a lot of action films. Some people don't like the mix between documentary style and the "proper film", I take it that the whole film, not just the documentary bits, is made for us as if we were the people in the world of the film having to assess what has happened, due to a likely change in future power relations. Vicus may have been a "traitor" (though we were traitors to him first), but the fact that he was may now be one of the few things that can help us, that is why the film is all about him, what will he do?