Smart, exciting sci-fi from South Africa

Rating: 9/10 (16 August 2009)

Newcomer Neill Blomkamp shows up every American sci-fi blockbuster of the last decade. It's not an extremely complex film, but it is coherent, has a decent amount of intelligence, a good idea behind it and fairly interesting characters. That's all you really need, isn't it? The premise: 20 years ago, a gigantic alien ship stalled over the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. Inside it were about a million aliens, starving to death and unable to fix the ship. They were brought down and allowed to live in the slums of the city. The human inhabitants dislike them, and want them to be removed from their society. The story: Sharlto Copley plays a bureaucrat in charge of moving the population of aliens, known as Prawns, into a refugee camp some distance from the city. Obviously, with a population now numbering nearly one and a half million, these creatures aren't easily moved. Some of them even have some tricks up their sleeves. The story obviously has parallels to South Africa's own apartheid situation, which gives the movie a little bit of heft. I also thought Copley's character was quite daring, because he's the protagonist but he's really quite an unlikeable little snot for most of the movie (it also supplies a more identifiable alien character, named Christopher Johnson). The little flack the film has gotten from critics involves its basically turning into an action flick in the second half (the first half is actually done in documentary form, which works for the most part). While I admit it's a little more predictable in its second half, I don't see why we should complain that it's an action movie when it's a good action movie. We actually care when the characters are in danger. With all the garbage that has been released in the summer of '09, a good action movie is more than welcome. One complaint I would make, probably the thing that holds the film back from being a masterpiece, is the completely bland villains, led by a dull corporate CEO and a sadistic military leader.