Reinstates my belief in science fictions films. It's a wonder!!!!

Rating: 9/10 (11 January 2010)

I've never been much of a man for science-fiction movies. After the days of "Star Wars" and "Back to the Future", Hollywood went through a period of time where everything sci-fi that it spewed was absolute trash, but lately it's beginning to redeem itself with incredibly good films such as "WALL-E", "Star Trek" and the incomparable "Avatar". So when a friend recommended I watch a sci-fi film called "District 9" directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, I did so with many expectations...and I must say the film delivers, enormously. I obtained a sense of utter satisfaction from watching it, and I declare it's one of the best sci-fi movies I've ever seen.
It's completely fictional, of course. In a near future, a gigantic alien spaceship has arrived to Earth and is now suspended in midair over the city of Johannesburg in South Africa. After 3 months of uncertainty, humans board the spaceship and find millions of aliens living therein, malnourished, sick and in need of assistance; so the humans decide to transport all of these aliens to a holding camp in Johannesburg where the aliens can regain their strength and repose. These Prawns (that's how humans decided to call them, because of their obvious resemblance to prawns) are generally peaceful and adapt quickly to the rule of men, and they quickly become a hot subject for 'alien rights' and countless discussions and organizations worldwide. But they begin taking over the holding camp, so humans must evacuate it and fence it, and this alien camp on Earth becomes known as District 9.
Now, District 9 is a serious problem because the Prawns have made their own small world inside it, they're reproducing at a fast rate and they're engaging in shady activities which cause great commotion to humans...so the MNU, the Office of Alien Affairs, decides to relocate the millions of Prawns to a larger camp outside of Johannesburg where they may not pose such a risk to humans, and they send their top employee Wikus Wan de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) with a team of soldiers to notify the Prawns of their eviction. Now, Wikus is a sweet, sympathetic, jolly man who takes this new job with happiness and excitement, but he's in no way prepared for what he encounters inside District 9...or how his entrance into the alien society will affect his life and that of his fellow humans.
Now, where should I start? The movie is filmed almost in documentary style, with a variety of scientists, sociologists and experts being interviewed; they open the film by explaining everything that happened when the alien spaceship appeared on Earth, and lots of news footage is shown. Wikus is also interviewed, alongside some of his family members, and we immediately begin to establish a personality to this jolly man, who adores his wife and who tries to do his job as well as he can. He has a fascination with the Prawns, and we see him fidgeting excitedly and grinning from ear to ear when he's given the mission at District 9. He's a character we immediately like and easily identify with, even if he DOES have some traits that disturb us...like his unnerving need to touch everything, to explore, to probe into things that are really not of his concern. We see him like a sociable person who greets everyone at the base, who messes with soldiers' weapons without knowing what they are and who, once inside the camp, explores the alien settlement with fascination, touching, touching, touching.
Before Wikus enters District 9, the interviewees on screen foreshadow an ominous event that 'happened' in District 9, and with which Wikus was heavily involved; that event is what the film is all about. The majority of scenes are taken by a hand-held camera, or from the buzzing helicopters, and it serves to involve us in the film's plot to a point where it feels like it's us walking beside Wikus, traversing the district. The editing is remarkable- scenes change, camera angles change perfectly, capturing that facial gesture, that body movement, lingering on that doubtful expression long enough to create tension and to move, fast-paced, onto the next scene. The score quite good, and since it's extremely subtle and muted, we're hardly aware it's there, and it builds up from sound to sound until we're so immersed in the action on screen we never really noticed when it got there to enhance the thrill and the suspense.
This seems at first like any underground film, with a complete cast and crew of 'unknowns', but we KNOW it's mainstream Hollywood because of the impressive special effects and the magnificent production, manned by producer Peter Jackson. Just recalling his name reminds us of the astounding visual quality of his films, "The Lord of the Rings" and "King Kong", so there's really no need for me to try and explain the visual effects- they're amazing.
Technically, the film is heavenly perfection. Thankfully, it also has a story, and a very good one at that. Now, the truly remarkable thing about the story is that it manages to involve us and it makes us actually CARE about the characters on screen, alien and human, even through some absurdly quirky characteristics of the plot. For example, the aliens who look like Prawns- they look cute and weird at the same time. Or the fact they could basically kill for cat food, which is practically their drug. A scene where tension is released and a possible street brawl featuring heavy gunfire is stopped with the help of some cans of cat food would seem laughable and silly in the hands of another director, but Neill Blomkamp has written and directed a story which, even through its implausibility, commands our attention and weaves a tapestry of action and suspense.
The downfall of the film? I can't think of any.
Rating: 3 stars and a half out of 4!!