Instant Sci-Fi Classic

Rating: 8/10 (30 September 2009)

From the outset, it's not difficult to see why Peter Jackson attached his name to this project. Sure, he is being altruistic in helping a young director aiming for the big league, after having co-directed 2008's short Crossing The Line. More likely though, he just wanted to be in on this. Because Neil Blomkamp delivers intelligent, multi-layered science-fiction rivaled only by the likes of Alien(s) and Blade Runner. Only this time, the future is now.
In 1989, a city-sized alien ship has entered our atmosphere and hangs suspended in the skies over Johannesburg, South Africa, with the world awaiting first contact. After several months of interspecies silence, a government agency called Multi-National United (MNU) successfully drills through the exterior of the ship, only to find the extraterrestrials aboard malnourished, sick and in need of help. First reports indicate these prawn-like aliens are working class members of their population only, with all leadership wiped out, possibly on account of a hypothetical virus. With the eyes of the world focused on the South African capital, MNU has no choice but to set up a relief camp for our interstellar guests, bearing resemblance to refugee camps in all but name: District 9.
Fast forward twenty years, when a documentary-style set-up introduces us to protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (a brilliantly neurotic Sharlto Copley), an MNU agent who this day has been promoted to task leader for the oncoming relocation program. District 9 has become a crime and poverty stricken slum, with its alien population imprisoned by MNU, now sturdily in control of research, development and law enforcement rights. One of the many messages of the writer/director's layered script seeps through all but subtly here, when footage of D9 and the riots that closed it off from the human world is nearly indistinguishable from real world outbursts of discrimination and consequently ensuing apartheid and segregation throughout humanity's history. Another (albeit comical) message appears to be 'the Nigerians did it', when we are introduced to the newest racket of our warmonger friends: pushing cans of cat food, the drug of choice in prawn circles, in exchange for alien weaponry, which is of the biological kind and can only be used by aliens themselves. Leave it to the Nigerians to stock up regardless.
Mankind's next solution in this surprisingly could-be-real situation is to move the entire prawn population of 1.8 million to another closed perimeter, some two hundred miles outside the city, where we can pretend the third kind never interfered with our way of life. During the preparatory handing out of eviction notices, Van de Merwe comes in contact with sweet, sweet irony as well as an alien substance manufactured by one of the smarter prawns (to fuel the command pod he hides under his shack; the same pod that came down from the mother ship two decades earlier, but was never found by MNU). The exposure subsequently causes him to gradually transform into a fishy alien himself, instantly making him the most sought after commercial object in twenty years, as his newly grown prawny appendage enables him to use alien weaponry (the kind best compared to MIB's laser guns and Noisy Crickets). Van de Merwe becomes an outcast overnight, as we discover MNU is of course one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and promptly sets out the entire military force to find him, lead by the fiercely adequate colonel Koobus Venter (David James, another successfully employed unknown). The search party evidently leaves him no choice but to hide in District 9, where he eventually teams up with the pod-hiding prawn (the aptly named Christopher Johnson) to rethink their predicament. It's basically Shrimper's List from here on out, just in case viewers have missed thát analogy.
On account of spoilers however, I will leave the fast-paced second part of the movie to the viewers. Blomkamp has set the scene, brought us his reflections on humanity (not too subtle, but never too in-your-face) and, more-over, pushed the science fiction envelope. After all, the ridiculously restricted budget of thirty million dollars employed for the extremely crafty special effects is the exact amount Jackson went over budget for his latest one-man show. (yes, the two hundred million dollar one-man show. With the monkey). He can now safely go out with a bang (which, believe me, he will). At any rate, he marked a new and extremely original standard in cinematic sci-fi history, enabling him to be thankful for the added weight of his behind-the-scene producer, but will have him confidently flying solo on his next project (which might very well be District 10).