Hands down, the finest sci-fi film since "Children of Men" (2006); also, it's what "Alien Nation" (1988) could have been...

Rating: 10/10 (17 August 2009)

You read my summary correct, folks: "District 9" is the finest sci-fi film I've seen since "Children of Men" (2006). Now why is that astounding? Because the genre of science fiction, while well-known for its occasional brilliance, is also rife with movies that are just flat-out terrible. Science fiction is a genre that takes both intelligence and originality combined with some impeccable skill to truly master. Of course, not every sci-fi film can be "Star Wars" (1977) or "Blade Runner" (1982). Likewise, not everybody can be George Lucas or Ridley Scott.
That is where "District 9" comes in, so far the best movie I've seen this year.
Since "Children of Men" depicted a future in which mankind was on the verge of extinction due to a worldwide infertility pandemic, the movie skillfully made a case for humanity to survive despite our past atrocities against each other. Here in "District 9," humanity is again seen at its absolute worst, because we have reverted back to one of our most basic, cruelest instincts: our ability to hate.
What I just typed means to suggest that "District 9," as a science fiction/action film, may very well be one of the most socially conscious sci-fi pictures ever made. "Alien Nation" (1988) had almost the exact same set-up as this film; I DID like that film, BTW. But where it went wrong was in the way it backtracked on its principles of how we treat each other just when things started getting interesting. What started out as a sly social commentary on how human beings will react to an extraterrestrial race's integration into the human populace, devolved into a standard buddy-cop movie with a slight, slight hint of social commentary.
In "District 9," it's been over 20 years since an alien ship washed ashore on Earth, settling over the skies of Johannesburg, South Africa. Now for all of us history buffs, the significance of South Africa as this film's setting is not a random, isolated incident: South Africa has one of the worst civil-rights histories of any nation in the industrialized world, due largely to their government's apartheid policies that kept the native majority black African population oppressed under a white minority for over 40 years and those policies were only just abolished 15 years ago (as of this writing).
The alien creatures, derisively nicknamed "prawns" due to their appearance which is a combination of insect-iod and sea crustacean, in "District 9" could of course be seen as a stand-in for any oppressed people or immigration population. What's most disturbing about this set-up is that formerly oppressed black South Africans are amongst those speaking negatively against the prawns, that they live like animals and that they should go home (how they're supposed to do that exactly is never explained by the South African people) - they're partial to eating cat food - in District 9's crowded, run-down slums, of which could very easily be seen as any ghetto - from South Central L.A. to the Bronx to, well, Johannesburg, South Africa - which is of course ruled by a strong military/police presence.
Things get underway in a mock-u-mentary-/documentary-style fashion involving the promotion of a hapless tool named Wikus van de Merwe (newcomer Sharlto Copley) from corporate office drone to field manager overseeing the relocation of the prawns from District 9 to a new home 240 kilometers away. Wikus is not your typical action movie hero; he demonstrates fairly early in the picture during the raids that he is in fact a coward, and only with his newfound status as relocation manager does he really seem to have any sense of power and authority over another life, human or alien. Without giving away too much of the plot, Wikus comes into contact with some potent alien bio-technology that quickly makes him an enemy of the state, and he is forced to go on the run into District 9 to evade his captors. It is here that he soon comes to discover, much to his horror, that he may very well be the only thing stopping a full-scale Earthbound intergalactic conflict between Us and Them, but more accurately, Their systematic annihilation by the powers-that-be in Johannesburg. And only then does he seem to make a gradual transition from coward to (marginal) hero.
Peter Jackson ("The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) produced it, but the real strength of this picture lies within the watchful, socially conscious eye of director Neill Blomkamp. Blomkamp makes no attempt to hide the strong parallels between the events of "District 9" and human society. The allegory is pretty in-your-face, but the movie does not bog itself down too much in its real-life parallels. Instead, he plays on our emotions - he makes us feel for the prawns, no matter how disgusting they may appear to be, and their conditions, and to a lesser extent Wikus - and also lets us have it with some explosively violent action sequences in the last quarter of the film, all undercut with some sly, and pretty damn funny, social satire.
Just as I wrote two years ago about "Children of Men," "District 9" may yet be another link in the chain that will pull science fiction out of the gutter. This is by far the must-see sci-fi movie to see so far this century. I was genuinely moved by this picture, not just by its action sequences, but by the message, about our cruelest, basest instincts, and it's these qualities that makes Them far more sympathetic than Us. All I can say is that I'm glad I had the opportunity to see this film today, of all days.
10/10