First Contact Might Be Better Handled Without Aggression, as Can Be Understood by Moral Attitude, Not Policy.

Rating: 9/10 (1 November 2009)

Peter Jackson has used his name to gain the widespread hype and attention needed for a film like this to succeed. That's a good thing, but the film is actually directed by Neill Blomkamp, a South African director who shows a need for a different mentor, if that is their working relationship. Blomkamp's structure shows both elegant and sardonic economy in giving us the exposition. District 9 is a self-contained, symbolic parable that sets out as a documentary made in a sci-fi universe. Oddly enough, it gradually begins to almost literally dissolve into a bullet-paced thriller, and from there an exploding bodies convention. But when it does, the story has entirely absorbed you in its backhand-slaps.
The story, adapted from a short film by Blomkamp, is told by way of the sci-fi genre so that the social issues relevant to him through what he's seen so closely are dealt with from a fresh, exotic perspective. Indeed, the title itself, as well as the premise, of District 9 are apparently drawn from events in South Africa during the apartheid in Cape Town called District Six. That is all I should say, because the strongest element to the tension is the way it conceals each still developing plot point so that it all surprises us from the very beginning. I am curious as to how closely the true story and the plot of the movie resemble each other, if the real account has been degraded by the artifice, especially when the climax devolves into nonstop futuristic gunfire turning countless figures in a row into showers of gore and goop.
Whatever the case may be, it is absolutely refreshing to see a sci-fi film with truly engaging concepts rather than machine wars or magical lands that have no bearing on anything whatsoever, which though they have their quality canons have been done to bland and stale excess. And the special effects, set design and various facets of practical and aesthetic details build organically from those clear concepts and serve both allegorical and perspective-shifting backstory purposes. The acting is not pat by any means, but rather ingeniously real in the case of a few particular main players. Sharlto Copley, who evidently was reluctant to take on the role, is totally and completely becoming as his neurotic, quick-on-feet character.
I don't believe that most special effects-driven American audiences, including the audience with whom I saw the movie, want to think about what it's trying to say about state reliance on worldwide corporations as a means of privatized government and military. But I'm sure that they'll enjoy their fictional representatives here as evil characters they'll love to hate. I doubt they'll know or particularly care if the film refers to contemporary evictions and forced removals to new suburban ghettos in post-apartheid South Africa and the resistance of their residents. Most Americans are all but unaware of the high-profile attempted forced removal of Cape Town settlements to temporary relocation areas or evictions in the shack settlements. But I believe they'll deeply sympathize with the oppressed aliens in the film. And it is that audience reaction that will gratify those in the know, many of whom will be people, like me, who only read up after seeing the movie. And that is the most important benefit of films like this.